Chronic or Recurrent Abdominal Pain

Abdominal pain, be it acute or chronic, remains the most common and most challenging complaint in gastroenterology and family medicine practices, for it encompasses a wide spectrum of etiologies. This chapter will focus on chronic abdominal pain, and will discuss its basic pathophysiology and localization, and will subdivide chronic abdominal pain into distinct categories in order to make the approach to diagnosis and management more focused. The abdomen-specific physical examination will then be discussed, as well as the initial work-up, which will help narrow the differential diagnosis in order to provide a more comprehensive therapeutic approach.