Medically unexplained symptoms in an urban general medicine practice

The authors investigated the prevalence of multiple medically unexplained s ymptoms (MMUS) as identified by primary care physicians (PCPs) in a systema tic sample of 172 patients. Patients were from a university-affiliated urba n primary care practice serving a low-income population. Patients with a hi story of MMUS were older (mean: 57.2 vs. 53.0 years), more likely to be fem ale (90.5% vs. 72.3%), and less likely to be married or living with a partn er (14.4% vs. 36.2%) than those without MMUS. Patients with MMUS had over t wice the rate of any current psychiatric disorder, almost two-and-a-half ti mes the rate of any current anxiety disorder, and greater functional impair ment. These data suggest that patients with MMUS are as common in urban pri mary care clinics as in more affluent clinics and reinforce the need for PC Ps to screen these patients for common and treatable psychiatric conditions .