This has resulted in much confusion, and many physicians are now diagnosing CFS as though it were a specific illness. Although the authors of these definitions have repeatedly stated that they are defining a syndrome and not a specific disease, patient, physician, and insurer alike have tended to treat this syndrome as a specific disease or illness, with at times a potentially specific treatment and a specific outcome. Despite the list of signs and symptoms and test exclusions in these definitions, patients who conform to any of the CDC, Oxford, Australian and Canadian CFS definitions may still have an undiagnosed major illness, certain of which are potentially treatable. None of these secondary symptoms is individually essential for the definition and few are scientifically testable. Secondary symptoms and signs were then added to this primary fatigue anomaly. By assumption, this CFS fatigue can be acquired abruptly or gradually. is acquired Central Nervous System (CNS) dysfunction, that of CFS is primarily chronic fatigue. It is a chronic fatigue state where the one essential characteristic of M.E. “The physician and patient alike should remember that CFS is not a disease. This chapter includes the following definition of CFS: Taylor for their book Handbook of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, John Wiley and Sons Inc., Hoboken N.J., titled “The Complexities of Diagnosis”1, Chapter 3. is located on our website under Publications and is available as a hard copy or a free download. In light of this state of affairs, the Nightingale Research Foundation created its 2007 Definition of M.E. has a clearly defined disease process, while CFS by definition has always been a syndrome. John Richardson, and others who closely studied M.E. Melvin Ramsay (case descriptions published 19), Dr. In creating the Nightingale Definition, we have studied decades of clinical evidence, and followed up on the work of Dr. The position of Nightingale Research Foundation is that the IOM does NOT describe or define M.E., and that the ICC, while far superior to the IOM, is still not specific enough. This is the report most widely used and accepted throughout the world today (2022). information, to create their vague 2015 IOM report, minimizing the disease yet again. Unfortunately the CDC did not accept or adopt the ICC, written by 26 experts in the field, and instead commissioned its own group with limited access to M.E. is a specific diagnosis requiring thorough patient history, examination, and testing. The CCC was updated and replaced in 2011 by the International Consensus Criteria (ICC) which insisted that CFS should not be considered a diagnostic entity and that M.E. and CFS as though they were the same illness. Definitions have also included the 1991 UK ”Oxford” report and the more well-known 2003 Canadian Consensus Criteria (CCC), that talks of M.E. This definition, referred to as “Holmes”, was later replaced by the 1994 ”Fukuda”, then by the 2005 “Reeves”, and most recently by the 2015 IOM (Institutes of Medicine) report, still emphasizing fatigue. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) first defined CFS, with great emphasis on the word “fatigue”, in 1988. symptoms being confused with the symptoms for neurasthenia, multiple chemical sensitivities, fibromyalgia syndrome, chronic mononucleosis, and much more. is a distinct illness, while both CFS and ME/CFS are umbrella terms for a group of symptoms common to many illnesses and conditions. and ME/CFS represent a complex, multi-system group of afflictions, adversely affecting the brain, heart, neuro-endocrine, immune and circulatory systems in our bodies, but, crucially, M.E. There have been many attempts to define CFS, some of them described in our 1992 book ‘The Clinical and Scientific Basis of ME and CFS’. If a patient or a family member has tried to search the internet for an understanding of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.), or so-called “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” (CFS, currently being called “ME/CFS”), they will have been overwhelmed by the multitude of technical descriptions and the numerous overlapping medical conditions.
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