What is the Best Way to Identify and Quantify Irritable Bowel Syndrome?

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) has come from being a 'diagnosis of exclusion' to becoming a positive diagnosis. The evolution of well-defined diagnostic criteria has greatly aided this transition, particularly Rome III Criteria based on expert opinion in the world in the field of functional gastrointestinal disorders. Even though this aids in minimization of costs on numerous tests, room for improvement exists to prove without doubt that using these criteria is a beneficial method leading to better implementation of the guidelines. There has been much debate and proposal of models for assessing severity of IBS with no general agreement over which is the most appropriate scale. A recent Rome Foundation Working Team Committee also proposed a new scale for measuring severity of IBS patients in the pursuit of objectifying the process. A great deal is expected from this scale.