Multidisciplinary care improves symptoms in patients with functional gastrointestinal disorders compared with treatment by a gastroenterologist alone, an Australian trial shows.

In the first randomised controlled trial of its kind, 188 patients were randomised either to treatment by their gastroenterological specialist alone (46 patients) or to attendance at a multidisciplinary clinic (98 patients).

At the multidisciplinary clinic, patients had access to dieticians, pelvic floor physiotherapists, psychiatrists and a gut-focussed hypnotherapist by referral from their treating gastroenterologist, the authors wrote in the Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

All patients had been referred to gastrointestinal or colorectal clinics at St Vincent’s public hospital in Melbourne for functional GI disorders during 2017-18, with 59% having irritable bowel syndrome and 27% diagnosed with functional dyspepsia.