[ICPC diagnoses in 60 offices of general practitioners]

The new classification system ICPC was used by 60 general practitioners to record consulting room encounters during one week. The study focused on unemployed and marginalized patients, and provided experience in the use of ICPC shortly after the system was made mandatory by National Insurance Administration. One to five months afterwards, 85% of the GPs used ICPC fully and 10% to some extent. We had no problems in coding the remaining text diagnoses, nor in recoding to the chapters of the diagnostic system ICHPPC. A quarter of the main diagnoses concerned the component of symptoms. Within the problematic chapters of psychiatric and musculosceletal illnesses, the doctors applied diagnoses of symptoms and diseases to very varying degrees. ICPC makes it possible to exclude gender-related causes for the consultation. Consequently, the gender differences in the distribution of components and chapters virtually disappeared. The female surplus among the patients was reduced to 10%, of which 6.5% can be attributed to the larger share of women among the elderly. Thus, ICPC seems to be a useful tool in epidemiology.