Dysphagia vs. Dyspepsia

Main Difference

The main difference between Dysphagia and Dyspepsia is that the Dysphagia is a medical word for “trouble swallowing” and Dyspepsia is a Human disease.

• Dysphagia

  Dysphagia is the medical term for the symptom of difficulty in swallowing. Although classified under “symptoms and signs” in ICD-10, the term is sometimes used as a condition in its own right. People with dysphagia are sometimes unaware of having it.

  It may be a sensation that suggests difficulty in the passage of solids or liquids from the mouth to the stomach, a lack of pharyngeal sensation, or various other inadequacies of the swallowing mechanism. Dysphagia is distinguished from other symptoms including odynophagia, which is defined as painful swallowing, and globus, which is the sensation of a lump in the throat. A person can have dysphagia without odynophagia (dysfunction without pain), odynophagia without dysphagia (pain without dysfunction), or both together. A psychogenic dysphagia is known as phagophobia.

• Dyspepsia

  Indigestion, also known as dyspepsia, is a condition of impaired digestion. Symptoms may include upper abdominal fullness, heartburn, nausea, belching, or upper abdominal pain. People may also experience feeling full earlier than expected when eating. Dyspepsia is a common problem and is frequently caused by gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) or gastritis. In a small minority of cases it may be the first symptom of peptic ulcer disease (an ulcer of the stomach or duodenum) and, occasionally, cancer. Hence, unexplained newly onset dyspepsia in people over 55 or the presence of other alarming symptoms may require further investigations.

  Functional indigestion (previously called nonulcer dyspepsia) is indigestion “without evidence of an organic disease that is likely to explain the symptoms”. Functional indigestion is estimated to affect about 15% of the general population in western countries.