[Chronic fatigue syndrome--also an insurance medicine problem]

Not everybody who is chronically tired has a chronic fatigue syndrome. The diagnosis of the chronic fatigue syndrome is still a problem, and is becoming a problem in health insurance medicine too. There is a lack of knowledge concerning the causes, the diagnosis and the therapy of the chronic fatigue syndrome. And there is still the question if the chronic fatigue syndrome is an entity of its own. For these reasons we should apply the few facts we really know about the chronic fatigue syndrome. This is the working case definition of Kaplan et al. from 1988. Otherwise there will be done hundreds of expensive laboratory tests, which are useless for the patient and very costly for the health insurance companies.