Meaning & use
dysphagia
Last updated
Meaning
noununcountablemedical
A medical condition in which a person has difficulty swallowing food, drink, or saliva.
Grammar: Uncountable; it names a condition, so you say 'dysphagia is common' rather than 'a dysphagia'.
Patterns
- suffer from dysphagia
- cause dysphagia
- treat dysphagia
The patient was referred to a specialist after complaining of dysphagia.
Dysphagia can make eating and drinking painful or even dangerous.
Nurses are trained to watch for signs of dysphagia in stroke patients.
Common combinations
- oropharyngeal dysphagia
- Oropharyngeal dysphagia affects the throat rather than the food pipe.
- esophageal dysphagia
- Esophageal dysphagia often feels like food is stuck in the chest.
- severe dysphagia
- Severe dysphagia may require a feeding tube.
- symptoms of dysphagia
- The doctor asked about the first symptoms of dysphagia.
Synonyms and how they differ
- difficulty swallowing
- The everyday phrase; dysphagia is the technical medical term for the same problem.
Word family
- dysphagic adjective
- Relating to or suffering from dysphagia.
Commonly confused: dysphagia or dysphasia?
dysphagia vs dysphasia
Dysphasia is a language disorder, while dysphagia is a swallowing disorder; they sound similar but affect different functions.
Practice
A patient who has trouble swallowing is most likely to be diagnosed with ______.
Choose one answer.
'Dysphagia' means difficulty swallowing. 'Dysphasia' is a language problem, 'dyspepsia' is indigestion, and 'dyslexia' is a reading difficulty, so none of the others fits the symptom described.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “dysphagia”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.