Acute oropharyngeal palsy is a rare subtype of Guillain-Barré syndrome. It is characterized by dysphagia and diminished deep tendon reflexes, while notably sparing limb muscle weakness and orbicularis oculi paralysis. Due to its rarity, dysphagia caused by acute oropharyngeal palsy may remain undiagnosed. We report a case of dysphagia that developed following diabetic ketoacidosis. The patient was a man in his 70s who was transported to our hospital by emergency services due to diabetic ketoacidosis. Severe dysphagia persisted despite the successful management of his diabetic ketoacidosis. Although the diagnosis was challenging, we established a diagnosis of acute oropharyngeal palsy based on physical examination findings and cerebrospinal fluid analysis results. We observed improvement in dysphagia caused by acute oropharyngeal palsy following balloon dilation therapy. We present this case to emphasize the importance of including acute oropharyngeal palsy in the differential diagnosis when evaluating patients with bulbar palsy.

Acute oropharyngeal palsy is a rare subtype of Guillain-Barré syndrome. It is characterized by dysphagia and diminished deep tendon reflexes, while notably sparing limb muscle weakness and orbicularis oculi paralysis. Due to its rarity, dysphagia caused by acute oropharyngeal palsy may remain undiagnosed. We report a case of dysphagia that developed following diabetic ketoacidosis. The patient was a man in his 70s who was transported to our hospital by emergency services due to diabetic ketoacidosis. Severe dysphagia persisted despite the successful management of his diabetic ketoacidosis. Although the diagnosis was challenging, we established a diagnosis of acute oropharyngeal palsy based on physical examination findings and cerebrospinal fluid analysis results. We observed improvement in dysphagia caused by acute oropharyngeal palsy following balloon dilation therapy. We present this case to emphasize the importance of including acute oropharyngeal palsy in the differential diagnosis when evaluating patients with bulbar palsy.

Background/Aims: The Heart Failure Association (HFA)-PEFF score is recognized as a simple method to diagnose heart failure (HF) with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between HFA-PEFF scores and cardiovascular outcomes in HFpEF patients. Methods: A total of 502 consecutive HFpEF patients were prospectively observed for up to 1,500 days. Cardiovascular outcomes were compared between two groups of patients, defined by their HFA-PEFF scores: those who scored 2–4 (the intermediate-score group) and those who scored 5–6 group (the high-score group). Overall, 236 cardiovascular events were observed during the follow-up period (median, 1,159 days). Results: Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that there were significant differences in composite cardiovascular events and HF-related events between the intermediate-score group and the high-score group (p = 0.003 and p < 0.001, respectively). Multivariate Cox proportional hazards analysis showed that the HFA-PEFF scores significantly predicted future HF-related events (hazard ratio, 1.66; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.11 to 2.50; p = 0.014); receiver operating characteristic analysis confirmed this relationship (area under the curve, 0.633; 95% CI, 0.574 to 0.692; p < 0.001). The cutoff HFA-PEFF score for the identification of HF-related events was 4.5. Decision curve analysis revealed that combining the HFA-PEFF score with conventional prognostic factors improved the prediction of HF-related events. Conclusions HFA-PEFF scores may be useful for predicting HF-related events in HFpEF patients.

It remains unclear whether selective amygdalohippocampectomy, an operative technique developed for use in epilepsy surgery to spare unaffected brain tissue and thus minimize the cognitive consequences of temporal lobe surgery, actually leads to a better memory outcome. The present study was performed to investigate the effects of selective surgery on memory outcome in patients with intractable mesial temporal lobe epilepsy due to hippocampal sclerosis treated by transsylvian selective amygdalohippocampectomy (TSA). The results of the present study indicated that left TSA for hippocampal sclerosis tends to improve verbal memory function with preservation of other memory function. Right TSA for hippocampal sclerosis can lead to signifi cant improvement in verbal and nonverbal memory function, with the memory improvement observed one month after right TSA persisting until one year after surgery.