Like most of us, doctors are really really busy. We try to give high quality care to a large number of patients each day, return phone calls, visit sick patients in the hospital, work our share of nights and weekends, fulfill our yearly continuing medical education requirement, and wrestle with electronic medical records, AND try to keep up with the new recommendations and guidelines for each illness.
So, if you think you might have fibromyalgia, then help your doctor out by providing them with the latest information on the diagnosis of fibromyalgia, because it is a BIG CHANGE from the way patients were diagnosed in the past. To find this information, direct your primary care doctor to the July 2010 issue of Fibromyalgia Network, and the article by Dr Frederick Wolfe et al in “The American College of Rheumatology Preliminary Diagnostic Criteria of Fibromyalgia and Measurement of Symptom Severity,” published in the May 2010 Arthritis Care and Research Journal (Volume 62, Number 5, pp 600-610).
The study found that 25% of people with fibromyalgia did not meet the 1990 criteria for diagnosis. One quarter of people with fibromyalgia were missed! Yikes! This simple study correctly identified 88.1% of fibromyalgia patients. 75% to 88.1% might not seem like a giant leap in percentages, but it is thousands of people who will now receive the correct diagnosis, and sooner. We are heading in the right direction.