The elderly choking after eating, due to advanced age, organ function degradation and other physiological factors caused by rare, often need to pay attention to reflux pharyngitis, pharyngeal peripheral neuropathy, cerebrovascular disease and other conditions.
1. Reflux pharyngitis: after food enters the stomach through the mouth and esophagus, the stomach contents of some patients will flow back into the pharynx, stimulating the local mucous membrane and causing choking cough.
2. Peripharyngeal neuropathy: localized lesions in the pharynx can lead to local nerve damage, which may cause the epiglottis to close the tracheal orifice, resulting in choking; other surrounding organs such as the thyroid gland, lymph nodes, etc. can also indirectly compress the laryngeal recurrent nerve to cause the vocal folds to close, causing choking cough.
3. Cerebrovascular disease: mostly seen in acute cerebrovascular disease such as cerebral hemorrhage, cerebral infarction and other sequelae, the patient’s cerebral cortex and conduction nerves and other damage, thus causing the vocal folds closed insufficiency followed by choking cough.
There are many other causes of choking in the elderly, choking is very easy to cause aspiration pneumonia, or even asphyxiation and life-threatening, should go to the hospital in a timely manner, to clarify the cause of the disease, and follow the doctor’s instructions for treatment.