Fibro w/out tender points?

Can you have fibromyalgia without have the tender points?

[jason80]

I would also like to know.  Maybe Plateletgal will comment. Most of the symptom checkers I've looked at point heavily towards the tender points. I have a few tender points that match well, but not the minimum requirement and I have a lot of other symptoms that arent typically mentioned.

[ohanamama]

Yes, you have to have the tender points.  The key is finding a doctor who is good enough at finding them.  I've seen 6-7 rheumatolgists in my health career, and only one has been good enough at it to find just about all 18 of them.  I always left his office in shear pain, tears, in need of break-through pain meds.  I'd leave other doctor's offices and they we're hard pressed to find four or five.  So yes, you really do have to have them, and you'll find that a few of them are really obvious, but to get the diagnostic 11, you need a good doctor.

[kiddthekatt]

I agree with ohanamama, yes you have to have the tender points. Before being sent to my Rheumy by my internist, he tried to find the tender points and only found 6, but he told me that he wasn't trained to ind them. The very first visit with my Rheumy, he found 16 of the 18 points, and by the time I got out of there, I could barely move and was crying like a baby. Good luck.

gentle hugs
Angel

[patsy10]

As far as I know you must have 11 out of 18 tenderpoints.  I had 14.  Unfortunately, many people get diagnosed with FMS without meeting the criteria.  I think this diagnosis is made when doctors don't know what is wrong and feel the need to give out a diagnosis.  Or they are just not educated in the diagnosic criteria needed for a FMS diagnosis.

[VaBreeze]

The criteria used to determine FMS does rely upon tenderpoints along with other symptoms known to occur with this disease.  The tenderpoints are the main clue to dx'ing FMS.

http://www.rheumatology.org/publications/classification/fibromyalgia/fibro.asp?aud=mem

I found this to be interesting...

~23 deaths per year from 1979–1998. [Unpublished CDC data]
Crude numbers of deaths coded as underlying cause-of-death as 729.1 rose from 8 in 1979 to a high of 45 in 1997.
In 1998,”Myositis and Myalgia, Unspecified” accounted for only 0.45% (42/9367) of all deaths attributed to arthritis and other rheumatic conditions.

This leads me to question why this information is 'unpublished' by the CDC.