Posted online by Suzy Chapman, ME Agenda and reposted with permission.
The Recommendations resulting out of the 10-11 May meeting of the [American] Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Advisory Committee (CFSAC) are now posted on the CFSAC website. Minutes for Day One had been posted at the end of June on the videocast page, but are not currently available. Hopefully Minutes for both Day One and Two will be available shortly on the Meetings page.
Recommendations
The specific recommendations articulated by the Committee are:
1. CFSAC rejects current proposals to code CFS in Chapter 18 of ICD-10-CM under R53,82: Chronic fatigue, unspecified Chronic fatigue syndrome NOS. CFSAC continues to recommend that CFS should be classified in ICD-10-CM in Chapter 6 under "diseases of the nervous system" at G93.3, in line with ICD-10 and ICD-10-CA (the Canadian Clinical Modification), and in accordance with the Committee's recommendations of August 2005. CFSAC considers CFS to be a multi-system disease and rejects any proposals to classify CFS as a psychiatric condition in US disease classification systems. (Note: no disease classification system under HHS' control proposes to move or to include CFS in or among psychiatric conditions.)
2. CFS is an illness with enormous economic and human costs. The April 2011 NIH State of Knowledge Workshop indentified a number of gaps in what is known about the illness. To address these gaps warrants an interagency effort comprising, but not limited to, NIH, CDC, and AHRQ.
Further, the focus should be on interdisciplinary discovery and translational research involving interacting networks of clinical and basic science researchers. Areas to be examined would include the following: identification of patient subsets for detailed phenotyping and targeted therapeutic interventions, biomarker discovery, systems biology approaches and disability assessment.
To facilitate the above goal, CFSAC recommends that M.E./CFS research receive funding commensurate with the magnitude of the problem and that the NIH (and/or other appropriate agencies) issue an RFA specifically for M.E./CFS.
3. CFSAC asks that HHS organize a workshop to engage experts in disability assessment, the outcome being a document useful to patients and adjudicators which could contribute to more efficient and fair disability process.
Read documents related to the May 10-11, 2011 meeting:
