Fibromyalgia Is Real – It’s Official!

Published: // Updated: March 13, 2021

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Fibromyalgia is real and doctors will no longer be able to say it isn’t. Fibromyalgia is finally being recognized as an official diagnosis. On October 1, 2015, fibromyalgia was included in the new ICD-10 list of medical codes.

Fibromyalgia Is Real - It's Official!Pin

ICD and stands for International Classification of Diseases. ICD codes are used by healthcare workers, policy-makers, insurers, researchers and patient organizations to classify diseases and other health problems. The ICD code is recorded on many types of health records.

The new ICD-10 list of codes is being adopted across the U.S. It makes fibromyalgia an official diagnosis. For the past 30 years, the ICD-9 list of codes was used. It did not include a code for fibromyalgia. Instead, doctors had to use the code: Myalgia and myositis, unspecified (729.1), which includes any disorder causing muscle pain or inflammation.

While muscle pain is definitely a part of fibromyalgia, there are other important symptoms and unique features such as non-restorative sleep, fatigue, and brain fog. In the new system, fibromyalgia finally gets its own diagnostic code: Fibromyalgia (M79.7).

Validation For Fibromyalgia

Finally, a stamp of approval in the medical communities acceptance of fibromyalgia. Not only will doctors no longer be able to say, “Fibromyalgia is not real”, it may also make winning a disability claim a little easier.

According to the National Pain Report: “The new code will also enable more accurate studies of fibromyalgia treatment outcomes, as the data for many of these observational studies are gathered by tracking diagnosis codes. Without its own diagnoses code, fibromyalgia studies have been hampered by watered down data from the inclusion of patients that did not actually have fibro, but some other illness-causing muscle pain.”

One Step Closer In Our #invisiblefight

Now that fibromyalgia has gotten its own diagnostic code, it puts us one step closer to people understanding our invisible illness. I think it’s appropriate it was announced during Invisible Illness Awareness Week. Our #invisiblefight in validating our illness within the medical community is a huge win.

It’s official, Fibromyalgia is REAL!

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