Dr. Matteson agreed. “The most important aspect of the survey is awareness-building. If the findings can be brought to the attention of educators and practitioners with resultant changes in practice, then they will influence patient care,” he says.
Dr. Anne Louise Oaklander, an associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, tells Reuters Health by email that the results did not surprise her: “Fibromyalgia isn’t a disease but, rather, a term agreed on by groups of physicians to describe a loose constellation of symptoms. The criteria for inclusion and exclusion are complex and have varied over the years; plus some of the features are impractical or difficult to apply or contradict medical experience.”
“A minor weakness is that they assessed knowledge of earlier versions of the American College of Rheumatology diagnostic criteria (1990 and 2010) but not the latest changes to them in 2011 and 2016, which are the ones that doctors ideally should be using,” says Dr. Oaklander, who was not involved in the study.
“Also, they included medical specialists other than rheumatologists, and I don’t think it’s realistic to expect doctors from other medical specialties to know the details developed by rheumatologists to guide rheumatologists,” she concluded.
Dr. Kumbhare did not respond to requests for comment.
Reference
- Kumbhare D, Ahmed S, Sander T, et al. A survey of physicians’ knowledge and adherence to the diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia. Pain Med. 2017 Nov 21. doi: 10.1093/pm/pnx271. [Epub ahead of print]
