The concept of consequences of disease in patients with low back pain

This paper is based on 212 patients operated on 1 year earlier for lumbar disc herniation. We should have liked to find severity scales for impairment in the ICIDH. The severity scale for disability was not practical for use with low back pain patients. Assignment to the different scale categories of occupation handicap was relatively easy. As a theoretical model of the process of an individual's illness we found it helpful to use that proposed by Purola. The ICIDH concepts seem like a bridge between the medical (internal system) and social connexions (external system) of illness.