Functional Somatic Syndromes

Repetitive strain injury (RSI) consists in a soft tissue disorder, manifest by pain, tenderness and muscle weakness. There are no standard diagnostic tests that are consistently abnormal in this condition. The prevalence of RSI is related to the decade in which this is reported, country, type of occupation, season and age of the sufferer. Objective measure of pathological dysfunction in patients with RSI has been carried out in only a few centers. Virtually all of the well-controlled studies that have been carried out on RSI patients demonstrate that there is a higher reported frequency of depression and anxiety. The three main hypotheses to explain RSI concern the medical, psychological and sociological models of illness. The aims of clinical evaluation of patients with suspected RSI are to determine the diagnosis as far as possible and to decide on how far the disorder identified is related to work.