Achalasia of the cardiac sphincter and the pylorus?

A patient with a recurrent achalasia of the cardia was found, after a Heller cardiomyotomy, also to have pyloric insufficiency necessitating gastric resection. The pylorus appeared to contain virtually no ganglia at all. On the basis of an experiment with rabbits, in which vagotomy was shown to have no appreciable effect on the ganglion cells in the pylorus, it was concluded that the abnormality demonstrated in this patient could not be attributed to a possible injury of the vagus nerves but was probably due instead to achalasia of the pylorus.