[Diagnostic criteria and therapy of gout]

Among the diagnostic criteria the proof of urate crystals in the joint fluid is regarded as absolutely specific in the acute gout. In contrast to this the hyperuricaemia as an isolated finding has only a slight diagnostic value. For scientific and clinical proposes 7.0 mg/dl is to be regarded as upper limit value of the serum uric acid for the two sexes together. The chronic primary gout may with the help of the clearance of uric acid, the daily excretion of the quantity of uric acid as well as the pH-measurement of the urine pathogenetically be differentiated into a type of overproduction (type I about 20%) and into a type of renal excretion (type II about 80%), from which therapeutic consequences are the result. By dispensary care of the chronic form of the course we succeed, as a rule, in avoiding severe organic lesions at the kidney.