Fibromyalgia should be suspected in patients presenting with chronic (greater than 3 months), multifocal pain that cannot be explained by an obvious pathological process – e.g. inflammation, infection, degeneration or neoplasm. Once fibromyalgia is suspected, simple laboratory tests should be performed to exclude conditions that may present in the same way.
To use the ACR criteria you may download this work sheet. This is a physician/nurse led interview worksheet.
1) Widespread pain index (WPI) 7 and symptom severity (SS) scale score 5 or WPI 3–6 and SS scale score 9.