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At times, the mucous membrane around the uvula may swell, causing the uvula to expand 3–5 times its normal size. This condition is known as uvulitis. When the uvula touches the throat or tongue, it can cause sensations like gagging or choking, although there is no foreign matter present. This can cause problems with breathing, talking, and ...
“The uvula is the punching bag located at the back of the soft palate, and helps to close off the upper throat from the lower throat during swallowing and speech,” says Craig Zalvan, M.D ...
To check the uvula, a tongue blade is pressed down on the patient's tongue and the patient is asked to say "ah"; the uvula should look like a pendant in the midline and rise along the soft palate. Abnormal findings include deviation of the uvula from the midline, an asymmetrical rise of the soft palate or uvula and redness of either.
Again, when examining the throat of such patients, if everything seemed to be moving well, then clinicians are often befuddled as to what the source of the throat pain is. With sensory testing, one can demonstrate that the throat tissues are numb, signifying some damage to the sensory fibers of the vagus and thereby identify vagus nerve injury ...
If you wake up in the morning with a sore throat, you could unknowingly be sleeping with your mouth open. Dr. Love says that this is another non-infectious reason why some people have a sore throat.
Touching the damaged side produces no response at all. At one point, it was thought that a lack of the gag reflex in stroke patients was a good predictor for dysphagia (difficulty with swallowing) or laryngeal aspiration (food or drink entering the larynx ), and was therefore commonly checked for.
The good news, though, is that pain on the right side of the body alone without any other symptoms usually isn't something to worry about—whew!—even though several organs could be affected ...
A progressively severe sore throat on one side and pain during swallowing (odynophagia) usually are the earliest symptoms. As the abscess develops, persistent pain in the peritonsillar area, fever , a general sense of feeling unwell , headache, and a distortion of vowels informally known as "hot potato voice" may appear.