Irritable bowel syndrome, functional dyspepsia, and functional abdominal pain syndrome

Recurrent or chronic abdominal pain is a description and not a diagnosis. The clinician should consider both disease and functional pain. In the absence of obvious disease, adolescents fulfilling symptom-based criteria for functional gastrointestinal disorders can be treated for their problems without initially performing extensive diagnostic studies. Most of these patients will have symptoms resembling IBS, functional dyspepsia, or functional abdominal pain syndrome. It is imperative that the clinician takes a biopsychosocial approach in dealing with these patients. Although the clinician still evaluates for biologic disease, he or she maintains an appreciation that psychosocial events may have a profound impact on physiology and symptom production.