When Holly Newby came round after emergency surgery to remove her appendix, she was looking forward to a future free of excruciating pain. The 21-year-old from Leeds was operated on after dashing to hospital with crippling soreness on her right side.
After years of persistent abdominal cramping and numerous tests that failed to reveal the true cause, it finally seemed the puzzle had been solved. But when doctors later revealed that the appendix they removed was, in fact, perfectly healthy, Holly, an NHS clinical support worker, was stunned. ‘It was bitterly disappointing, especially to think I had been through the surgery for nothing,’ she says. ‘And pretty soon the pain was back – and as bad as ever.’
In fact, it took five years after she first felt unwell as a 16-year-old before Holly finally got a diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a condition that affects one in five Britons.
The delay meant Holly lost a huge chunk of her teenage years, missing out on socialising as her condition kept her at stuck at home.
And she’s not alone, says Alison Reid, chief executive of the charity IBS Network. ‘We hear stories like this all the time. Often it takes several years because IBS is a complex condition and the symptoms ebb and flow. Some people who call our helpline are positively suicidal because they feel so unwell.’
New start: Holly Newby is looking forward to a life without pain after five years of crippling IBS
Now there is a major drive to speed up diagnosis and get patients effective treatment much sooner. New guidance from the British Society of Gastroenterology aims to slash the time it takes to spot IBS from months, and sometimes, as in Holly’s case, even years, to a matter of weeks. It urges GPs to consider the condition whenever they see common symptoms such as diarrhoea, constipation, cramping and bloating.
Currently, family doctors faced with these symptoms have to first rule out a list of serious illnesses, including bowel cancer, coeliac disease and inflammatory bowel disease. Even then, patients often end up having endless exploratory internal examinations – when it is IBS all along.
‘It is mainly a process of elimination,’ says Dr Kevin Barrett, a GP in Watford and chair of the Primary Care Society for Gastroenterology. ‘Some patients put up with it for years before they see their GP.’
The new guidance still calls for cancer checks to be done but it pushes IBS up the list of suspect conditions and recommends treatments start much sooner.
These include anti-spasmodic drugs to reduce cramping, pills to combat diarrhoea and sticking to a low-FODMAP diet – a regime that cuts out foods that might trigger bloating. But if patients fail to respond to these, several new drugs are available from NHS gastroenterologists, the guidance says. These include linaclotide, a daily tablet that has transformed Holly’s life since she was put on it by an NHS consultant earlier this year.
GPs are not allowed to start patients on the drug – it has to be done by a specialist – but once it is under way, they can authorise repeat prescriptions. Holly says: ‘When I was 16, I started getting really bad abdominal pain and would have to sit in a hot bath to try to ease the pain. My problem has always been chronic constipation.
‘I really struggled to go to the toilet –
