Is there a difference between abdominal pain and discomfort in moderate to severe IBS patients?
OBJECTIVES: The aims of this study were to: 1) determine the relative prevalence of self-reported pain-predominant and discomfort-predominant symptom patterns in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) patients; and 2) test the hypotheses that pain-predominant patients report higher GI symptom severity, show higher psychological symptom severity, show worse quality of life, and demonstrate higher health care use. METHODS: A total of 256 consecutive ROME I-positive IBS patients with moderate to severe symptoms were classified according to whether they rated their predominant IBS symptoms as pain (n = 52), or as nonpainful discomfort (n = 128) on the Irritable Bowel Syndrome Quality of Life questionnaire. The validity of this classification scheme was confirmed by interview in a subsample of 45 patients. IBS-specific symptom patterns, psychometric assessment, and health-related quality of life measures were obtained using validated survey instruments. RESULTS: Contrary to the generally accepted n
