Future Research Methodological Aspects

Abstract

Until a hundred years ago patients suffering from gastrointestinal diseases were largely characterized on the sole basis of symptomatology and physical signs, i.e. by symptom diagnoses or clinical syndromes. Such diagnoses represented, perhaps, more a way of describing how the clinical problems presented themselves, rather than actual idiopathic clinical entities with regard to the underlying pathogenesis/etiology and the consequent chance of influencing the progress of the disease by rational treatment or prophylaxis.