The importance of diagnosing neck pain.

Diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis is a common but poorly recognised condition that may have important and occasionally life-threatening clinical outcomes. We report the case of a 71-year-old man with giant osteophytes in his cervical spine which caused dysphagia and silent aspiration, leading to pneumonia, septicaemia, aortic wall infection and septic arthritis. Early recognition of the cause of his neck pain may have averted the subsequent clinical course.