Functional gastrointestinal(FGI) disorders are chronic or periodic conditions characterized by severalsymptoms whose structural and biochemical causes have not been determined. Indeed,although (FGI) disorders affect millions of people of all ages, their pathophysiologicalmechanisms are still unclear, so that no pathological conditions have been provento be related to this kind of illness, nor biological markers have been foundto identify their sufferers. Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) has been shown tobe one of the most common FGI illnesses. IBS is characterized by abdominal discomfortor pain and it has at least two of the following three features: pain relievedby bowel movements, more frequent stools with the onset of pain, and looserstools at the onset of pain with no resultant inflammatory, metabolicor structural abnormalities. Since IBS diagnosis is fundamentally based on thedescription of symptoms reported by patients, it has been considered to be anexclusion diagnosis, despite the attempt to establish a connection between theorigin of the illness and disorders caused by physical or sexual abuse or evenby psychological disturbances. Although biochemical and hormone dosages havebeen performed in routine blood test for IBS, a precise biochemical marker hasnot been identified. Nevertheless, when the patients of this study were assessedby means of contrast intestinal radiography so as to observe topographic alterationsin the cecum, it was possible to detect a mobile cecum in all of them. Wouldthis be a coincident factor or could the mobile cecum a widespread butmisdiagnosed illness explain the irritable bowel syndrome? The resultsof our study provide evidence that the majority of patients diagnosed as havingIBS do not actually suffer from such illness, but rather from the mobile cecumsyndrome.
