Rome Process

The "Rome Process" is an international effort to define and categorize the functional gastrointestinal disorders, or FGIDs, (of unknown cause) such as Irritable bowel syndrome and Functional dyspepsia. This approach represents a substantial change in thinking given that doctors have usually relied on basic science and palpable “evidence” to diagnose all kinds of ailments. More than half of gut disorders encountered by physicians are functional (i.e. disorders of gut function) and there is no structural or biochemical explanation for them, so it was necessary to develop alternate methods to identify them. This process is akin to that followed by psychiatrists to categorize and diagnose psychiatric entities, which culminated in the DSM-IV criteria. These should not be “diagnoses of exclusion"; they demand a more positive approach.
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