Oro-pharyngeal sensitivity and elicitation of swallowing in man.

In dry swallowings repeated at maximum frequency, manometric recording on healthy volunteers showed that the swallowing intervals successively increased. After surface anaesthesia of the oro-pharynx the difficulties in dry swallowing increased. A corresponding increase did not occur in sham tests. The results show that the elicitation of swallowing is dependent upon oro-pharyngeal sensitivity and further that the reflexive elicitation of swallowing cannot instantly be fully replaced by other mechanisms.