Almost everyone who ends up diagnosed with retrograde cricopharyngeal dysfunction arrives at the clinic already knowing the name of the condition. They found it online. Their doctors, in many cases, had not heard of it.
That inversion is the through line of a case report in Auris Nasus Larynx describing two patients with a lifelong inability to burp. The first is a 17-year-old boy treated successfully with rikkunshito, a Kampo herbal formula used in Japan, combined with mosapride, an established prokinetic drug. No needle into the throat. No operating room. The second patient, a 30-year-old woman with refractory symptoms, needed an endoscopic cricopharyngeal myotomy after a botulinum toxin injection gave only temporary relief.
