The new tool provides an evidence-based approach to the diagnosis of functional gastrointestinal disorders, including irritable bowel syndrome and functional dyspepsia, by providing diagnostic pathways for common symptoms such as abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea and constipation, according to the release.
The diagnostic algorithms are based on the consensus of international experts, use standard methods and yes-no decision trees and all end in specific diagnoses, providing clinicians with the best diagnostic strategies currently available. The Rome Foundation’s object is a symptom-based diagnostic assessment of 15 of the most common GI symptoms presented by patients to PCPs and GIs.
“Functional gastrointestinal disorders are among the most commonly seen chronic disorders in clinical practice, affecting all regions of the digestive tract and comprising about 40 percent of gastroenterologists’ diagnoses,” Douglas A. Drossman, MD, FACG president of the Rome Foundation and co-director of UNC Center for Functional GI and Motility Disorders, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said in the release. “Patients don’t go to their doctors complaining of IBS, or Sphincter of Oddi dysfunction. They present with symptoms of abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and constipation among others.”
Diagnosis of the GI diseases is also challenge as many symptoms often mimic one another, which can result in physicians not making a formal diagnosis. The Rome Foundation has for years recognized the limitations of the diagnostic criteria for functional GI disorders they developed known widely as “the Rome Criteria” — a standardized classification system for the functional GI disorders, which, until now, did not include a clinical application component. The new diagnostic tool is the result of a two-year collaborative process that incorporates symptom-based criteria and other diagnostic information into clinical algorithms that can be easily understood and applied in the clinical setting, according to the release.
The full-text of the Rome Foundation Algorithms is available in a special section of the April 2010 issue of The American Journal of Gastroenterology.
Read the release on the new Rome Foundation diagnosis algorithms.
