Study co-author Theodore Ganiats, M.D., of the department of family medicine and community health in the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami, wrote a
companion piece(annals.org) to the study in which he broke down the key elements of the group's research.
He told
AAFP News that ME/CFS has been ignored or mismanaged by clinicians in the past because some doctors don't consider it a real disease; other times, it's simply misdiagnosed. Regarding the latter, Ganiats said that just as hypertension and diabetes may be missed during a clinical visit, ME/CFS can be misdiagnosed for a variety of reasons.
"Plus, there are many diagnostic strategies (for ME/CFS) out there, so it is confusing to doctors," he said. "We hope that the IOM strategy, based in evidence and simpler, will facilitate the diagnostic process."
Ganiats pointed to elements of the diagnostic criteria the IOM committee created that provide evidence that ME/CFS is a legitimate disease with a physiological basis.
