Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Dec 28, 2015; 21(48): 13582-13586
Published online Dec 28, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i48.13582
Case report of Graves’ disease manifesting with odynophagia and heartburn
Yulia Evsyutina, Alexander Trukhmanov, Vladimir Ivashkin, Olga Storonova, Elina Godjello
Yulia Evsyutina, Alexander Trukhmanov, Vladimir Ivashkin, Olga Storonova, Department of Internal Disease Propaedeutics, Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, 119991 Moscow, Russia
Elina Godjello, Department of Endoscopy, Russian National Center of Surgery named after B.V. Petrovsky, 119991 Moscow, Russia
Author contributions: Ivashkin V designed the report; Evsyutina Y was attending doctor for the patient; Trukhmanov A, Storonova O and Godjello E were performed image diagnosis; Ivashkin V organized the report; and Evsyutina Y wrote paper.
Institutional review board statement: This case report was approved by the Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: The patient involved in this study gave his written informed consent authorizing use and disclosure of his protected health information.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors have no conflicts of interests to declare.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Vladimir Ivashkin, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of Internal Disease Propaedeutics, Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, Pogodinskaya street, 1/1, 119991 Moscow, Russia. gastro@orc.ru
Telephone: +7-926-5288648 Fax: +7-499-2483610
Received: April 30, 2015
Peer-review started: May 7, 2015
First decision: July 19, 2015
Revised: July 24, 2015
Accepted: October 12, 2015
Article in press: October 13, 2015
Published online: December 28, 2015
Abstract

Graves’ disease is an autoimmune disease, which can manifest with a variety of extrathyroidal clinical syndromes like ophthalmopathy, pretibial myxedema (dermopathy), acropathy, cardiomyopathy, and encephalopathy. Though quite rare, this disease can also manifest with gastrointestinal symptoms such as dysphagia, heartburn, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. We report a clinical case of Graves’ disease manifesting with dysfunction of the esophagus and heartburn in a 61-year-old man. In the muscular layer of the esophagus we found dystrophic changes led to its atony, which was documented by endoscopy and high-resolution manometry. The pathology features of esophageal symptoms were: focal proliferation of the basal cells, vascular distension, and dystrophy of the epithelial cells. Antithyroid treatment led to decrease of all clinical symptoms after 5 d of Thiamazole administration. Complete restoration of peristalsis in the esophagus, according to manometry, was observed in 1 mo after initiation of treatment.

Keywords: Graves’ disease, Heartburn, Odynophagia, Esophagopathy, Dysfunction

Core tip: We report a clinical case of Graves’ disease manifesting with dysfunction of the esophagus and heartburn in a 61-year-old man. In the muscular layer of the esophagus we found dystrophic changes led to its atony, which was documented by endoscopy and high-resolution manometry.