Committees

Rome Severity Commitee Report

Rome working group on severity in the functional GI disorders

Measuring severity in functional GI disorders (FGIDs) is extremely important since it can guide diagnostic evaluation, risk assessment, and treatment decisions. However, there has been a lack of consensus regarding severity in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and other FGIDs. In late 2005, the Rome Foundation assembled a working group to develop guidelines for severity assessment in FGID. This committee is comprised of members with different areas of expertise but with a mutual interest in severity and/or health outcomes assessment. The committee members are currently working on a document to summarize the literature on severity assessment tools and to provide guidelines in FGID. However, after a review of the existing literature, the group concluded that new data is needed to move this field forward. Therefore, the committee is planning to facilitate this by: 1) the prospective collection of data from community samples of IBS patients to determine patient reported clinical predictors of severity from an ongoing study conducted by Brennan Spiegel and Lin Chang, 2) the analysis of Doug Drossman's NIH patient study dataset to assess the associations of patient-reported ratings of severity to other symptoms and to physician ratings of severity, and 3) the establishment of patient focus groups to gather information about severity and treatment endpoints from their perspective. We look forward to obtaining novel information that will hopefully provide a better understanding of the patient related factors which have a major impact on illness severity of FGID. The committee is listed below: