[Causalgia in neurologic expert assessment]

Rendering an expert opinion on causalgia, after having clear determined it as the disease, poses many problems to the examiner. One ought to make this diagnosis with its serious consequences only under the following conditions: --when it is a case of a mostly partial trauma of a nerve with considerable intermingling of sympathetic fibres; --when the pains have a burning and primarily superficial character; --when the pain appear soon (hours, mostly days or weeks, more rarely months afterward) after the trauma; --when the pains are accompanied by considerable vasovegetative symptoms (cold sweats, cyanosis, hyperhidrosis and others). Secondary algodystrophic changes (muscle, joints, bones, and skin) are to be considered. In quantitatively judging the effects, an over-evaluation, as well as an underevaluation, is to be avoided by all means. Therapeutic effects and spontaneous remission after six to twelve months are to be considered. An exemplary case, in which a deterioriation of the capacity to work from 20 to 100% (!) was assumed, showed the need for taking the personality structure of patient into consideration.