2016 Volume 56 Issue 10 Pages 969-976
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a representative disorder in the field of psychosomatic medicine because most of patients have stress-related pathophysiology. The publication number of IBS along the recent years is dramatically increasing. As a committee chair of guideline for IBS in the Japanese Society of Gastroenterology, the author published the evidence-based clinical practice guideline for IBS in Japanese in 2014 and in English in 2015. Evidence-based clinical practice cannot completely predict the response to the treatment in individual patient. However, if we successfully gather patients with large numbers, the response rate with high probability would be predictable from the probability density function based on the published evidence. The importance of psychosomatic medicine has mathematically been proven in the section of stress-related pathophysiology, psychological abnormality, brain imaging, psychosomatic attitude/understanding of attending physicians, diet therapy, exercise, antidepressants, and cognitive behavior therapy. As the Japanese evidence-based clinical practice guideline for IBS is highly reliable and useful, this guideline should be used in the daily care for patients with IBS.
