[A man whose food gets stuck in the back of his throat]. / Een man wiens eten in de keel blijft hangen.

A 21-year-old man visited the GP complaining of food getting stuck in the back of his throat. We saw a thin string of tissue connecting the uvula to the palatopharyngeal arch and removed it surgically. No such case has previously been described in the absence of a history of trauma, infection or operation.

[A man whose food gets stuck in the back of his throat]. / Een man wiens eten in de keel blijft hangen.

A 21-year-old man visited the GP complaining of food getting stuck in the back of his throat. We saw a thin string of tissue connecting the uvula to the palatopharyngeal arch and removed it surgically. No such case has previously been described in the absence of a history of trauma, infection or operation.

Trends in Palliative Care Telephone Consultation Support for Health Care Professionals: A Dutch Nationwide Registry between 2004 and 2019.

Background: Regional palliative care consultation (PCC) teams aim to support health care professionals by telephone in providing quality palliative care (PC) in the Netherlands. Objectives: The study aims to assess trends in the number and characteristics of PC telephone consultations in the Netherlands between 2004 and 2019. Design: A retrospective observational study reviewed data from the Dutch national register for PC consultations by telephone (PRADO). To assess trends in the number of consultations, three time periods were defined: 2004-2008, 2009-2013, and 2014-2019. All analyses were conducted using STATA. Results: A total of 83,554 PC telephone consultations were analyzed. There was a slight decrease in the number of consultations since 2014, from 5811 (2014) to 4914 (2019). The Dutch PCC telephone helpdesk was mainly consulted by general practitioners, with pharmacological issues (65%) and pain (44%) being the main concerns. The data included 73,833 patients, of whom 63% were 65 years or older (18-109) and 51% were male. The proportion of noncancer patients increased during the selected time periods, 2004-2008 (11%), 2009-2013 (16%), and 2014-2019 (22%). The proportion of consultations requested for hospitalized patients was higher in 2014-2019 (7.9%) than in 2009-2013 (4.5%). Conclusion: Dutch PC telephone consultations have changed over time. More PC telephone consultations were held for hospitalized patients and noncancer diseases over the past years. These trends are in line with the shift toward more integrated PC in which different services collaborate.