The cola management in Dutch emergency rooms has concluded that the use of cola did not lead to an increased rate of improvement.
Introduction
The number of emergency room visits increases during the holiday season due to individuals suffering from partially chewed meat bites or similar foods getting stuck in their throats. You might be encouraged by research into home remedies to drink cola to dislodge stuck food and avoid an emergency endoscopy. Certainly, cola is cheap and widely available, with few side effects. However, you may want to think twice before dismissing the emergency room, according to a new study published in the British Medical Journal which concluded that this popular home remedy might not help in clearing a blocked esophagus.
Food Impaction in the Esophagus
The technical term for this condition is “food impaction in the esophagus,” more commonly known as “steakhouse syndrome” or “backyard barbecue syndrome.” Typically, poorly chewed pieces of meat (steak, chicken, pork) are the ones that get stuck in the esophagus, and when this happens, the individual facing this issue will experience difficulty swallowing to the extent that saliva begins to leak (due to the inability to swallow saliva). The patient may also suffer from chest or neck pain, and there is always a risk of esophageal rupture, leading to the food being absorbed into the lungs. Thus, going to the emergency room becomes essential.
Using Cola to Alleviate Food Impaction
The use of carbonated beverages like cola to relieve food impaction has been around for at least 20 years, if not more, as cola was mentioned as an effective treatment in a research paper in 1993 (although the study was small and included only eight patients). Among the recent studies is also a retrospective case study from 2018 that involved reviewing records of 19 patients who ended up in the emergency room due to esophageal obstruction and drank cola as a treatment. This worked in more than half (59 percent) of those patients. However, the authors acknowledged that the retrospective nature of the study led to several limitations and risk of bias in interpretation.
How Cola Works in Alleviating Stuck Food in the Throat
It remains unclear exactly how cola works to relieve stuck food in the throat. The prevailing hypothesis is that the gases dissolved in cola help break down the stuck food, but this was not supported by a 2004 study where cola failed to dislodge tightly packed cooked chicken pieces within graduated syringes. Instead, cola may help relax the esophagus to assist with dislodging stuck food, although the evidence for this is not conclusive yet.
New Study Disputes the Effectiveness of Cola in Alleviating Food Impaction
Bredenoord and others conducted a randomized study involving 51 patients who were admitted to emergency rooms in five Dutch hospitals between December 2019 and June 2022. Among them, 28 patients were regularly given cola, while the remaining 23 waited for the obstruction to resolve naturally. An endoscopy was performed if the obstruction did not resolve naturally in either group within the designated timeframe.
Results: The obstruction resolved naturally in 61 percent of patients, regardless of the group they were in, so administering cola did not increase the improvement rate. However, it remains a relatively small study. No adverse effects were observed, so subsequent studies administering cola prior to endoscopic procedures may be beneficial, according to the authors. It is still advisable to conduct endoscopy for follow-up, as it was found that underlying medical diagnoses contributed to the obstructions in 78 percent of those cases.
Source:
British Medical Journal, 2023. DOI: 10.1136/bmj-2023-077294
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