Adherence to Guidelines in Management of Irritable Bowel Syndrome in Ministry of Health Family Centers and Internal Medicine Department at Ain Shams University Hospitals

Abstract

Abstract Background: Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a functional gastrointestinal disorder, characterized by chronic abdominal pain or discomfort and altered bowel habits in the absence of detectable organic pathology. The condition is an important health problem throughout the world. The majority of patients with Irritable bowel syndrome are managed in primary health care facilities. Therefore it's very important for general practitioners and family doctors to be well trained in the approach to functional gastrointestinal disorders. Most of doctors believe that IBS is a diagnosis of exclusion and is not based on criteria, this approach is time consuming and costly of health care system, so using the diagnostic criteria are important to help the physicians to diagnose IBS simply without the need to exclude the other diseases Objectives were to measure the degree of adherence to guidelines in management Irritable bowel syndrome in Ain Shams University Hospitals and in three of Ministry of health family centers(Saray AlQuba, Al Darrassa, and the first settlement centers ) Cairo, Egypt Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out on 30 physicians in three Family Medicine centers and 30 physicians from Internal medicine department , Ain Shams University Hospitals every physician was evaluated by two of his patients Results: Almost half of physicians in both groups stated that they relied on diagnostic criteria in diagnosis of IBS , but by evaluating the practice through their patients it was found that only (10%) from family centers and (23.3%) from university were completely adherent to Rome III diagnostic criteria. Conclusion: Low adherence to diagnostic criteria (RomeIII) among study participants from MOHP and it was higher among physicians from university