Abstract

MUNOZ C, HAROLD. SOMATIZATION: DIAGNOSTIC CONSIDERATIONS. rev.fac.med [online]. 2009, vol.17, n.1, pp. 55-64. ISSN 0121-5256.

Somatization, the process by which people experience and express emotional distress through physical symptoms, is one of the biggest challenges a physician may face in his daily medical practice because the symptoms have no organic documentable cause. The article reviews and updates the knowledge of somatization and its various disorders, seeking to expand the tools for physicians to perform a more accurate diagnosis and provides some useful recommendations for the management of patients taking into account that the decision whether the etiology of the symptom is psychological and not physical is not easy, and neither it is to accurately diagnose the psychiatric disorder that induces this process.

Keywords : somatoform disorders.