The Rome process and Rome criteria are an international effort to create scientific data to help in the diagnosis and treatment of functional gastrointestinal disorders, such as irritable bowel syndrome, functional dyspepsia and rumination syndrome. The Rome diagnostic criteria are set forth by Rome Foundation, a not for profit 501(c)(3) organization based in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States.
Several systematic approaches attempted to classify functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGIDs). As a result, there were several key events which ultimately led to the current Rome Classification. In 1962, Chaudhary and Truelove published their study of IBS patients in Oxford, England. This was the first attempt to classify the new field of functional gastrointestinal disorders. Much of what they reported has persisted to the present day.
Subsequently, in 1978 came the "Manning Criteria" developed by Kenneth Heaton and colleagues in Bristol. This characterized IBS-D (IBS with predominant diarrhea), but importantly, a cluster of symptoms which were characteristic for this disorder. This ultimately became the basis for Rome's symptom-based criteria for IBS.
From 1980 to 1994, there were several epidemiological and clinical studies evaluating symptom prevalence and frequency in healthy subjects and IBS patients. Thompson, Drossman, Talley, Whitehead, and Kruis.
In 1989, the first consensus-based diagnostic criteria for IBS were established. The following year, a classification system for FGIDs was established.
From 1991 to 1993, several working teams (esophagus, gastroduodenal, bowel, biliary, anorectal) published symptom-based criteria and clinical features of the functional GI disorders within these anatomic domains in Gastroenterology International.
In 1993, a validated questionnaire of all the diagnostic criteria was created and was then applied in a national survey, the US Householder Survey: the first national epidemiological database on the prevalence, demographic factors, and health care seeking features of people with FGIDs.