Functional gastrointestinal (FGI) disorders are chronic or periodic conditions characterized by several symptoms whose structural and biochemical causes have not been determined. Indeed, although (FGI) disorders affect millions of people of all ages, their pathophysiological mechanisms are still unclear, so that no pathological conditions have been proven to be related to this kind of illness, nor biological markers have been found to identify their sufferers. Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) has been shown to be one of the most common FGI illnesses. IBS is characterized by abdominal discomfort or pain and it has at least two of the following three features: pain relieved by bowel movements, more frequent stools with the onset of pain, and looser stools at the onset of pain - with no resultant inflammatory, metabolic or structural abnormalities. Since IBS diagnosis is fundamentally based on the description of symptoms reported by patients, it has been considered to be an exclusion diagnosis, despite the attempt to establish a connection between the origin of the illness and disorders caused by physical or sexual abuse or even by psychological disturbances. Although biochemical and hormone dosages have been performed in routine blood test for IBS, a precise biochemical marker has not been identified. Nevertheless, when the patients of this study were assessed by means of contrast intestinal radiography so as to observe topographic alterations in the cecum, it was possible to detect a mobile cecum in all of them. Would this be a coincident factor or could the mobile cecum - a widespread but misdiagnosed illness- explain the irritable bowel syndrome? The results of our study provide evidence that the majority of patients diagnosed as having IBS do not actually suffer from such illness, but rather from the mobile cecum syndrome.
Irritable bowel syndrome; mobile cecum; functional bowel disorders; abdominal pain; constipation; diarrhea; bloating; abdominal distension; dyspareunia; cecopexy
