Somatization and Psychosomatic Symptoms by Kyung Bong Koh

Author:Kyung Bong Koh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer New York, New York, NY

13.4 Clinical Manifestations of Fibromyalgia

Descriptions of the pain experienced by fibromyalgia patients are various: “the pain is sometimes intense like burning or fulgurant,” “the pain persists even after termination of noxious stimulus,” and “the pain is accompanied by an unpleasant sense (dysesthesia).” These patients report that pain is caused by light contact (allodynia), another pain, and repeated noxious stimulus. Accompanying symptoms include malaise, headache, dizziness, tinnitus, temporomandibular joint arthralgia, chest pain, a functional dyspepsia-like symptom, irritable gastrointestinal symptoms, peroneal muscle convulsions (leg cramps), and dysmenorrhea. Due to the comorbidity with these symptoms, fibromyalgia is regarded as a functional somatic syndrome [10].

Sometimes, fibromyalgia patients report anxiety, tension, insomnia, and depressive mood, and some patients have psychiatric disorders such as major depressive and anxiety disorders. Among our cases (48 cases), we have found a tendency of dysautonomia in 87.5 %; irritable gastrointestinal symptoms in 36 %; typical irritable bowel syndrome in 48 %; sleep disorders in 84 %; and headache, primarily tension headache, in 62 %. Ninety percent of fibromyalgia patients are women, and 80 % of the female patients with fibromyalgia reported difficultly with menstruation, menstrual irregularity, or amenorrhea [11]. In addition to extreme generalized pain, chronic fatigue, slight fever, and pharyngitis symptoms are regarded as primary symptoms of fibromyalgia. Of 16 cases with fibromyalgia, 32 % met the diagnostic criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome [11].

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.