A personalized systems medicine approach to refractory rumination

Abstract

As with many functional disorders, rumination syndrome poses a great dilemma when approached via standard of care. This case report illustrates how rumination syndrome may be effectively approached using the systems medicine. The patient's treatment involved two distinctively different treatment cycles. Initially she was treated in an academic tertiary inpatient and outpatient multidisciplinary program with a primary symptom-based focus with little improvement. She subsequently sought care at a systems-based integrative medicine clinic within an academic family medicine centre, which identified the inciting events, diagnosed the current pathology and developed a stepwise treatment plan. The patient is now rumination free. Chronic or refractory diseases, especially when regarded as 'functional' may be approached by a systems medicine methodology, which allows physicians to fine-tune the vast amount of specific pieces of knowledge to achieve an integrated approach to managing the whole person.