Medically unexplained symptoms and the disease label

Medically unexplained neurological symptoms

A 56-year-old woman with seronegative polyarthritis presented with a four-year history of lower back pain and right-sided sciatica. On examination she had reduced power and impaired sensation in her right leg. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the spine revealed anterior degenerative slip of L4 on L5 with moderate overall reduction in canal calibre and osteophyte encroachment in the right lat...

Explaining medically unexplained symptoms.

Patients with medically unexplained symptoms comprise from 15% to 30% of all primary care consultations. Physicians often assume that psychological factors account for these symptoms, but current theories of psychogenic causation, somatization, and somatic amplification cannot fully account for common unexplained symptoms. Psychophysiological and sociophysiological models provide plausible medi...

Consequences of Medically Unexplained Symptoms

Reassurance: Medically Unexplained Physical Symptoms

Bill Anderson Escobar et al.’s discussion of medically unexplained physical symptoms is useful, and could trigger a renewal of how the medical profession works [1]. We are in transition at the present, and what we have been trained for is less and less relevant. This disjunction between our training and practise has given rise to a generation of unhappy doctors. The traditional “doctor” dealt w...

Neuroticism, Alexithymia and Medically Unexplained Symptoms

The contribution that alexithymia can make to the understanding of medically unexplained physical symptoms (MUS) was studied in 244 subjects drawn from a range of medical and non-medical situations. People’s histories of MUS-also called somatisation-were assessed using physical symptom lists derived from the DSM-III-R somatisation criteria. Two subscales from the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 ha...