Calcific Tendonitis of the Longus Colli Muscle: A Noninfectious Cause of Retropharyngeal Fluid Collection
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Calcific tendonitis of the longus colli (CTLC) muscle is an underrecognized cause of spontaneous acute or subacute neck pain, dysphagia, or odynophagia. Imaging may reveal a retropharyngeal fluid collection leading to the presumed diagnosis of retropharyngeal abscess. Recognition of this uncommon presentation is important to prevent unnecessary surgical incision and drainage. A 44-year-old otherwise healthy male presented with a 2-week history of progressive neck pain, stiffness, and odynophagia. A noncontrast CT scan of the cervical spine revealed a retropharyngeal fluid collection with a small area of calcification anterior to C2. There was a presumed diagnosis of retropharyngeal abscess. The patient was afebrile with normal vital signs. Flexible nasolaryngoscopy was unremarkable. C-reactive protein was elevated but all other bloodwork was normal with no evidence of an infective process. A CT scan was repeated with IV contrast showing no enhancement around the fluid collection. A diagnosis of CTLC was made. The patient was successfully managed with a short course of intravenous steroids and oral NSAIDs with complete resolution of symptoms. Clinically CTLC can mimic more serious disease processes. Identifying pathognomonic imaging findings often confirms the diagnosis. Awareness of this condition by the otolaryngologist will ensure proper patient management and avoidance of unnecessary procedures.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".