An innovative fast track solution for food bolus impaction due to Jackhammer esophagus in an emergency department: the "Nitro-Push Blind Technique" case report.

BACKGROUND: In the medical literature are described only few clinical cases of esophageal food bolus impaction due to esophageal motility disorders. Moreover, the management of this condition is highly variable with no evidence in the literature to strongly support a clear defined intervention. CASE PRESENTATION: In this paper we describe for the first time a case of 53-year-old male with food bolus impaction due to Jackhammer esophagus referred to emergency department. On the basis of the known esophageal past medical history as well as the absence of bones in the bolus, the patient was submitted to a new conservative treatment, the "Nitro-Push Blind Technique". CONCLUSIONS: The new technique performed with naso-gastric tube thrust after nitrates medication in definite clinical case supported by known functional disease, represents a safe and successful method, with short observational period to minimize exposure to potential morbidity and reduce the inpatient stay in emergency department. It should be recommended, once validated in a larger cohort, as the initial treatment of choice in the selected patients with food boneless bolus impaction in the emergency settings. Indeed, this management provides only minimal deviation from the current practice and is hence technically easy to learn and perform.

Is there a distinct form of developmental dyslexia in children with specific language impairment? Findings from an orthographically regular language.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to identify quantitative and qualitative differences between the reading and writing skills of children with developmental dyslexia and those of dyslexic children with a specific language impairment (SLI). BACKGROUND: It is suggested that although the etiology of developmental dyslexia and SLI may be diverse, dyslexic children with SLI and their language-intact peers are comparable on a behavioral level. METHODS: Three groups of second-grade children were compared on reading and writing tests with single words and nonwords: 15 dyslexic children with a history of SLI (SLI group), 15 dyslexic children with a typical pattern of language development (non-SLI group), and a control group of 30 children with no clinical history of learning disabilities or communication disorders. RESULTS: Analysis of the results revealed the performances of both SLI and non-SLI dyslexic groups to be comparable in terms of speed, accuracy, and error typology. CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms that there are parallels between dyslexic children with language disorders and their dyslexic peers with intact language skills, at least in terms of their performance on reading and writing tests.

No evidence for association between dyslexia and DYX1C1 functional variants in a group of children and adolescents from Southern Italy.

Recently, DYX1C1, a candidate gene for developmental dyslexia, encoding a nuclear tetratricopeptide repeat domain protein dynamically regulated in brain, has been characterized through a translocation breakpoint in a Finnish family. Two putatively functional variants, -3G/A and 1249G/T, have been reported to be significantly associated with dyslexia in this population. Further studies, conducted on different ethnic groups (English and Canadian), have not confirmed a role for DYX1C1 variants in increasing the risk for dyslexia. We investigated the role of these variants in dyslexic children and adolescents from Southern Italy. No significant evidence for association between dyslexia and these DYX1C1 putative functional variants has been shown. We argue that the different DYX1C1 allele frequencies shown among Italian and Finnish subjects with dyslexia could be attributable to the different linkage disequilibrium structure of these populations.