Diagnosis

Your health care provider will likely ask you for a description and history of your swallowing difficulties, perform a physical examination, and use various tests to find the cause of your swallowing problem.

Tests can include:

• X-ray with a contrast material (barium X-ray). You drink a barium solution that coats your esophagus, making it easier to see on X-rays. Your health care provider can then see changes in the shape of your esophagus and can assess the muscular activity.

  Your health care provider might also have you swallow solid food or a pill coated with barium to watch the muscles in your throat as you swallow or to look for blockages in your esophagus that the liquid barium solution might not identify.

• Dynamic swallowing study. You swallow barium-coated foods of different consistencies. This test provides an image of these foods as they travel down your throat. The images might show problems in the coordination of your mouth and throat muscles when you swallow and determine whether food is going into your breathing tube.
• A visual examination of your esophagus (endoscopy). A thin, flexible lighted instrument (endoscope) is passed down your throat so that your health care provider can see your esophagus. Your health care provider might take biopsies of the esophagus to look for inflammation, eosinophilic esophagitis, narrowing or a tumor.
• Fiber-optic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES). Your health care provider might examine your throat with a special camera and lighted tube (endoscope) as you try to swallow.
• Esophageal muscle test (manometry). In manometry (muh-NOM-uh-tree), a small tube is inserted into your esophagus and connected to a pressure recorder to measure the muscle contractions of your esophagus as you swallow.
• Imaging scans. These can include a CT scan, which combines a series of X-ray views and computer processing to create cross-sectional images of your body's bones and soft tissues, or an MRI scan, which uses a magnetic field and radio waves to create detailed images of organs and tissues.