ArticleScandinavian journal of primary health care2008
The diagnostic challenges presented by patients with medically unexplained symptoms in general practice.
Article in Scandinavian journal of primary health care, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- Carnosine treatment for gulf war illness: a randomized controlled trial.Global journal of health science · 2013Trial
- Somatisation in primary care: experiences of primary care physicians involved in a training program and in a randomised controlled trial.BMC family practice · 2009Trial
- Psychosomatic symptoms related to exacerbation of fatigue in patients with medically unexplained symptoms.Journal of general and family medicine · 2023Article
- Under-recognition of medically unexplained symptom conditions among US Veterans with Gulf War Illness.PloS one · 2021Article
- An Efficient PCA-GA-HKSVM-Based Disease Diagnostic Assistant.BioMed research international · 2021Article
- Interrelationships between symptom burden and health functioning and health care utilization among veterans with persistent physical symptoms.BMC family practice · 2020Article
- Prediction of Number of Cases of 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Using Social Media Search Index.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
- A descriptive study of disability in patients presenting with medically unexplained physical symptoms in a medical OPD setting.Journal of family medicine and primary care · 2019Article
- Predictors of somatic symptom severity: The role of cumulative history of trauma and adversity in a diverse community sample.Psychological trauma : theory, research, practice and policy · 2018Article
- Correspondence in Stakeholder Assessment of Health, Work Capacity and Sick Leave in Workers with Comorbid Subjective Health Complaints? A Video Vignette Study.Journal of occupational rehabilitation · 2016Article
- Inpatient hospital costs and length of stay for the treatment of affective and somatoform disorders - evidence from Germany.Risk management and healthcare policy · 2014Article
- Initial responses of different health care professionals to various patients with headache: which are perceived as difficult?International journal of behavioral medicine · 2013Article
- Symptom reporting in a general population in Norway: results from the Ullensaker study.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2013Article
- Non-specific, functional, and somatoform bodily complaints.Deutsches Arzteblatt international · 2012Article
- Somatisation disorder and its associated factors in multiethnic primary care clinic attenders.International journal of behavioral medicine · 2012Article
- The treatment of patients with medically unexplained symptoms in primary care: a review of the literature.Mental health in family medicine · 2010Article
- Psychiatric caseness is a marker of major depressive episode in general practice.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2010Article
- Reasons for ordering laboratory tests and relationship with frequency of abnormal results.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2010Article
- Early diagnosis of cancer--the role of general practice.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2009Article
- General practitioners' experiences with provision of healthcare to patients with self-reported multiple chemical sensitivity.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2009Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo describe the complexity of somatizing patients' symptomatology and the difficulties involved in the diagnostic process. DESIGN. Cross-sectional study of patients with medically unexplained symptoms.
settingBasque Health Service primary care centres in Bizkaia, Spain. SUBJECTS: The study comprised 156 patients selected at random from a list of 468 patients who had presented, over the course of their lives, six or more medically unexplained somatic symptoms for females and four or more for males, identified retrospectively by their practitioners.
main outcome measuresPhysicians interviewed these patients using the somatoform symptoms section of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI), and the Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders (PRIME-MD). The Medical Outcomes Survey Short Form 36 (SF-36) was filled in at home. Organic diseases whose diagnosis was established during the previous year were included in the study by consulting patients' medical records.
resultsPatients were found to have a median of three medically explained and 12 medically unexplained symptoms. Mental disorders were found in 83% of cases, associated with other morbidity categories in 78%. The predictive value of symptoms was lower than 26% for diagnosing broad disease categories.
conclusionsThese results depict an extremely difficult scenario for dichotomous diagnostic strategies aimed at classifying patients' symptoms as either organic or functional. Rather than struggling to choose one of these hypotheses, it is suggested that both of them should always be addressed concurrently.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.