Rome process

The "Rome process" is an international effort to create scientific data to help in the diagnosis and treatment of functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGIDs), such as irritable bowel syndrome, functional dyspepsia and rumination syndrome. The Rome Diagnostic Criteria are set forth by the Rome Foundation, a not for profit 501(c)(3) organization, under the professional management of Hilliard Associates based in Raleigh, North Carolina.

There were systematic approaches that attempted to classify the then hazy area of functional gastrointestinal disorders as early as 1962 when Chaudhary and Truelove published a retrospective review of IBS patients at Oxford, England. Later on, the "Manning criteria" for irritable bowel syndrome were derived from a paper published in 1978 by Manning and colleagues. This seminal classification started a new era and from then on, scientific work on functional gastrointestinal disorders proceeded with increased enthusiasm.

The Rome criteria have been evolving from the first set of criteria issued in 1989 (The Rome Guidelines for IBS) through the Rome Classification System for FGIDs (1990), or Rome-1, the Rome I Criteria for IBS (1992) and the FGIDs (1994), the Rome II Criteria for IBS (1999) and the FGIDs (1999) to the recent Rome III Criteria (2006). "Rome II" and "Rome III" incorporated pediatric criteria to the consensus.

The Rome criteria are achieved and finally issued through a consensual process, using the Delphi method (or Delphi technique). The effort is organised by the Rome Coordinating Committee. This process typically takes many months of work by investigators, organized into committees. The committees work by mail and telephone conferences until the final, defining meeting, which takes place in Rome, Italy. The Rome III effort encompassed 87 participants from 18 countries in 14 committees. Members were added from countries outside the more industrialized Western nations; this time there were members from China, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Hungary, and Romania. Additional working teams were created to work on issues including: gender, society, patient, and social issues; and pharmacology and pharmacokinetics. Two committees (neonate/toddler and child/adolescent), rather than one, served the pediatrics FGIDs.

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