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Aspiration can occur when food enters the trachea instead of the esophagus, getting stuck in your airways and triggering your body to cough
Aspiration can occur when food enters the trachea instead of the esophagus, getting stuck in your airways and triggering your body to cough.
If the food isn’t expelled, you can experience following symptoms:
- Violent cough when eating or drinking
- Congested feeling after eating or drinking
- Pain while swallowing
- Lump-like sensation in the throat
- Gurgling when you eat
In babies and children, symptoms of food aspiration may include:
- Weak sucking
- Breathing issues such as wheezing
- Rapid breathing when eating
- Red face, watery eyes, or changes in expression when feeding
- Slight increase in temperature after feeding
- Recurrent lung or airway infections
What are the complications of aspiration?
Aspiration can increase your risk of pneumonia and lead to severe infection or tissue damage. Aspiration pneumonia is a lung infection in which the lung gets inflamed and filled with fluid. Serious symptoms may include:
- Chest discomfort or heartburn
- Shortness of breath or fatigue when eating
- Trouble chewing
- Excessive saliva in the mouth
- Fever within 30 minutes of eating
- Frequent coughing with smelly mucus
- Confusion
- Anxiety
- Severe sweating
- Dehydration
- Malnutrition
- Weight loss
What can cause food aspiration?
You may have trouble swallowing or chewing as you age, causing you to aspirate more often. Factors that cause food aspiration include:
- Eating or drinking in a hurry
- Frequent vomiting
- Dental problems
- Mouth sores
- Acid reflux
- Fatigue
- Drinking large quantities of alcohol
- Loss of mental agility or altered consciousness
- Loss of muscle tone or coordination that interferes with chewing or swallowing (motor neuron diseases or bulbar palsy)
- Throat cancer
- Head and neck injuries
- Stroke
- Nervous system disorders such as:
- Radiation or chemotherapy for your throat or neck
- Breathing machines or feeding tubes
- Seizures
- Conditions that cause reduced saliva, such as Sjogren syndrome
- Muscular dystrophies
- Semiconscious or unconscious state, coma
- Lack of alertness due to medications, illness, surgery, or other reasons
- General anesthesia
How is aspiration treated?
Lifestyle modifications can help relieve aspiration:
- Not talking while eating food
- Maintaining good posture while eating
- Avoiding sticky foods
- Cutting your food into small pieces and chewing thoroughly
- Swallowing food before taking another bite
- Adding moisture to dry food
- Avoiding fried or spicy foods at least 3 hours before bedtime
- Eating when relaxed and alert
- Avoiding smoking
- Taking care of your mouth and teeth
