Description:
<jats:p><jats:italic>Background</jats:italic>. The prevalence of constipation in the (German) population has been shown to be 14.9% in a telephone survey, but more detailed data are required to characterize the sociographics and clinical characteristics of persons with different types of functional constipation, either constipation-predominant irritable bowel syndrome (IBS-C) or functional constipation with or without meeting Rome criteria.<jats:italic>Methods</jats:italic>. Of 2239 constipated individuals identified during the telephone interview, 1037 (46.3%) were willing to provide a postal address for a questionnaire, of which 589 (56.8%) returned the questionnaire, inquiring about sociographic data, clinical symptoms, and health care behavior related to constipation, as well as health-related quality-of-life (SF12). Subgroups of functionally constipated individuals were compared.<jats:italic>Results</jats:italic>. More than 50% of the respondents reported a somatic comorbid condition and/or regular medication intake that may contribute to constipation. We split the remaining individuals (<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M1"><mml:mi>N</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">214</mml:mn></mml:math>) into three groups, matching Rome-criteria for IBS (IBS-C,<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M2"><mml:mi>n</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">64</mml:mn></mml:math>) and for functional constipation (FC-R,<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M3"><mml:mi>n</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">36</mml:mn></mml:math>) and FC not matching Rome criteria (<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M4"><mml:mi>n</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">114</mml:mn></mml:math>). Nearly all sociographic and clinical characteristics were equal among them, and all individuals with constipation had similar and lowered QOL on the SF-12 physical health domain, but in IBS-C the scores were also significantly lower in comparison to FC-R and FC, in both the physical health and the mental health domain.<jats:italic>Conclusion</jats:italic>. Only a fraction of individuals with chronic constipation match Rome criteria for IBS-C or FC, but subgroups do not differ with respect to most other measures except quality-of-life profiles.</jats:p>