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Information and comments about Guidelines "good" and "bad"
Have you ever felt that your GP was struggling to know what it meant when you said you had chronic fatigue syndrome? Well, from now on every general practitioner in South Australia should have on their shelves a copy of a new set of guidelines on how to diagnose and treat ME/CFS. It's a document which you can use to discuss your condition with them.
Myalgic Encephalopathy (ME) and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS): Management Guidelines for General Practitioners (2004) is a 16-page document produced by the ME/CFS Society of South Australia Inc., the SA Government's Department of Human Services, the Adelaide Westem Division of General Practice and the University of Adelaide Department of General Practice. The taskforce included Paul Leverenz, former President of the SA ME/CFS Society, and well-known ME/CFS clinicians and researchers Dr David Torpy, Dr Richard Burnet, Dr Peter Del Fante and Dr Richard Kwiatek (links to some information about these researchers).
The Guidelines document includes: information about the illness; checklists for patients and GPS; recommendations for managing ME/CFS; useful complementary therapies.
Download the Guidelines from here [PDF, 460 kb] on the website of ME/CFS Society (S.A.) Inc.
CANADA: Clinical
Working Case Definition, Diagnostic and Treatment Protocols
The long-awaited Canadian Clinical Working Case Definition, Diagnostic
and Treatment Protocols for ME/CFS (2003) and Fibromyalgia
(2004) - developed by expert medical consensus panels of treating physicians
and world leaders in research - have both now been published. More
information, and reasons why they are better than the Australian RACP (2002)
Guidelines.
UK: Chief Medical Officer's report
The Report of the Working Party on CFS/ME to the Chief Medical Officer for
England and Wales was published in 2002. Unlike the Australian Guidelines,
this "CMO's Report" was welcomed by the main patient groups. Article about the UK report, with links to
the text and to more information.
USA: New Jersey Consensus Manual
A Consensus Manual for the Primary Care and Management of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
[PDF download 785K] edited by
Dr. Joseph John (2002) from the The Academy of Medicine of New Jersey, produced
with the cooperation and approval of the New Jersey CFS Association. It has
13 chapters each dealing with a different specialist area, only one of which
is depression (others include pain ("the second hallmark of CFS" after
fatigue ... and a symptom largely ignored in the Australian Guidelines), gastrointestinal
symptoms, sleep dysfunction, children and Adolescents, disability. The first
chapter is devoted to the pathophysiology of CFS.
Royal
Australian College of Physicans Guidelines (2002)
Background on the development and publication of the controversial
Australian Clinical Practice guidelines - the
Working Group, reaction and correspondence, background and reference documents.
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last revised 3 March 2006