Saw this on a documentary:
A patient has throat cancer. Part of the surgery entails removing the epiglottis, and there is subsequent radiation treatment. One of the long-term consequences of this is that patient has to lean forward to swallow so that the food will not end up in the trachea in the absence of the epiglottis (I’m not sure how this accomplishes it, but that’s the way it was presented).
Now, 15 years later. . .
Patient has apparently licked the cancer, but good, but is involved in a serious boating accident, leaving him with a broken neck. Part of the repair-work involves a halo brace, which greatly restricts movement. As the result, food has a way of dropping into the trachea, causing irritation, and ultimately, infection.
As it was presented, antibiotics were not going to be used to treat it, as the result of his radiation treatment 15 years earlier. There was no mention of any connection or why that was the case.
Now, this was not coming from a doctor. This was coming from a documentary narrator, reading a script prepared by a writer, so it’s not necessarily accurate. (I once heard a documentary narrator refer to dinosaur “stomach stones” as “gastropods,” instead of “gastroliths,” for example.)
So. . . any connection???