[Problems and disability pension in back and spinal diseases in occupational disability insurance]

In the German disability insurance, exclusion clauses are the dominating approach to the underwriting of low back pain. This is due to a lack of clear prognostic factors, the nonexistence of severity classifications and the strong impact of individual and psychological circumstances. Considering various clinical, individual and psychological indicators, a new system is introduced to allocate the prognosis of lower back pain to four levels of severity. This approach makes it possible to use extra ratings instead of exclusion clauses of mild and moderate low back pain.