Research Progress on Pathogenesis and Traditional Chinese Western Medicine Diagnosis and Treatment of Functional Dyspepsia
Functional dyspepsia (FD) is a highly prevalent functional gastrointestinal disorder in clinical practice, characterized by postprandial fullness, early satiation, epigastric pain, and epigastric burning. Its recurrent episodes substantially impair patients’ quality of life. According to the Rome Ⅳ criteria, FD is subclassified into postprandial distress syndrome (PDS) and epigastric pain syndrome (EPS), and overlapping presentations of the two subtypes are frequently observed. From the perspective of modern medicine, the pathogenesis of FD is closely associated with gastrointestinal motility disorders, visceral hypersensitivity, brain-gut axis dysfunction, Helicobacter pylori infection, gut microbiota dysbiosis, and psychosocial factors. In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), FD falls under the disease categories of “Pi Man (stuffiness-fullness syndrome)” and “Wei Wan Tong (epigastric pain)”. Its core pathogenesis lies in disordered middle-jiao Qi movement and impaired ascending-descending functions of the spleen and stomach induced by dietary irregularities, emotional disturbances, external pathogenic invasion, and constitutional deficiency. Western-medicine therapeutic strategies mainly include symptomatic interventions such as acid suppression, prokinetic agents, Helicobacter pylori eradication, and anxiolytic-antidepressant therapy. Guided by syndrome differentiation-based treatment, TCM adopts oral herbal formulas combined with external therapies including acupuncture, auricular-point pressing, and acupoint application. Each therapeutic system possesses its unique strengths. This review summarizes research advances regarding FD pathogenesis as well as TCM-western-medicine diagnosis and treatment, and identifies existing limitations within integrated TCM-western-medicine frameworks, so as to provide references for clinical management and scientific research.
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