[Functional somatic syndrome from the viewpoint of comprehensive medicine]

Abstract

Comprehensive medicine represents a medical treatment which is provided based on comprehensive understanding of patients, by grasping each patient as "a person who is living, now and here" in any case at any time. Its basic model was created by Day SB, Frankl VE and others as the biopsychosocial-existential model. In practicing this medicine, Ikemi Y and Nagata K introduced Oriental medicine into the modern medicine (Occidental medicine), and they proposed that establishment of psychosomatic medicine as the interface between the two should be essential. This concept has become the base of the integrative medicine, and its objective is to provide comprehensive medicine. Functional somatic syndrome (FSS) cannot be comprehended by the pathogenetic modern medicine. FSS can first be grasped in the concept of salutogenesis. In Oriental medicine, a functional pathological condition is regarded as an unorganized disease, and doctors who treat such patients are called "Jyo-i" (superior doctors). Therefore, there are many methods to assess the functional pathological conditions in the concept of Oriental medicine. On the other hand, doctors who are accustomed to establish diagnosis or treat organic diseases may misdiagnose FSS as a psychological disease (somatogenic pseudoneurosis) in not a few cases. FSS is affected by the lifestyle specific to individual patients. Therefore, it is essential to understand these patients comprehensively, namely biologically psychological, socially and existentially.