Fitzgibbon, E J, Murphy, D, O'Shea, K et al. · The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 1997
Irish doctors were surveyed about their experience treating patients with chronic, debilitating fatigue. The study found that fatigue is common in general practice—affecting about 1 in 1,000 people—with twice as many women as men affected. However, doctors used very different approaches to treating these patients and many were unhappy with the care they could provide.
This study documents the substantial burden of chronic fatigue in primary care and reveals significant variation and dissatisfaction in clinical management—highlighting a gap in evidence-based protocols. For ME/CFS patients, it demonstrates that in the 1990s, the condition was poorly understood and managed inconsistently by general practitioners, underscoring the need for better training and standardized care guidelines.
This survey does not establish the biological mechanisms of fatigue, does not confirm that all reported cases meet modern ME/CFS diagnostic criteria, and does not prove that any particular treatment approach is effective. It measures practitioner attitudes and practices, not patient outcomes or disease biology.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
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