Descriptive clinical research and medically unexplained physical symptoms.

Improving the understanding and classification of physical symptoms presently regarded as medically unexplained is handicapped by a lack of descriptive clinical data. This paper supports the urgent need for descriptive studies in this field, and backs this view by presenting such a study based on sample of patients registered in general practice. It was found that potentially useful subclassifications could be based on descriptive clinical variables such as symptom type (e.g. pain), symptom course, symptom duration and previous consultation pattern. The findings are discussed in relation to conditions such as somatisation disorder, the syndrome of chronic unexplained pain, and panic disorder.