FUNCTIONAL BOWEL DISORDERS - A MULTICENTER COMPARISON OF HEALTH-STATUS AND DEVELOPMENT OF ILLNESS SEVERITY INDEX

In a multicenter study of patients with painful functional bowel disor ders (FED), we compared the demographic, health status, and diagnostic features of patients with FED and developed a functional bowel disord er severity index (FEDSI) for research and clinical care. Two hundred seventy patients with FED in the United States, England, and Canada we re surveyed on symptoms and health status, and their physicians made a diagnosis and rated illness severity as mild, moderate, or severe. Co mparisons of 22 demographic and clinical variables were made by study site in addition to physicians' severity ratings. To develop the FBDSI , multiple regression analysis used the demographic and clinical varia bles to predict the physician's rating of severity. We found that most health status measures of patients with FED across study sites are co mparable and the derived and validated FBDSI scoring system uses three easy to obtain variables: FBDSI = [current pain by visual analog scal e (0-100)] + [diagnosis of chronic functional abdominal pain (0 if abs ent and 106 if present)] + [number of physicians visits over previous six months x 11]. The FBDSI can be used to select patients for researc h protocols and/or follow their clinical outcome or response to treatm ents over time.