IBS – Diagnosis

Transcript

IBS is a clinical diagnosis, meaning: if you have the typical symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (abdominal pain, a change in bowel habits, whether it be diarrhea or constipation and improvement in symptoms with bowel movements are the typical symptoms), so if a person has those and there are no alarming symptoms or clinical signs such as weight loss, bleeding, anemia, and a number of other concerning features – one can make a diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome. You don’t necessarily need to have blood tests or an endoscopy or cat scans or MRIs. Before, it used to be a diagnosis of exclusion, meaning you go to your doctor and he would run the whole gamut of tests and then when nothing was found, they would say it’s probably IBS. Now we know that if you meet the symptoms and there are no alarm symptoms, then one can make a diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome on clinical grounds.