[Unconventional treatment methods in multiple sclerosis and their expert assessment]

Unorthodox therapies are used also by MS-patients very frequently. Not all procedures are harmless affecting only the purse. The medical expert working within the German health care system will also be called for questions of compensation of costs. A survey of some paradigmatic unorthodox treatments is given. While the law and the jurisdiction concerning the public health insurance fund pronounce clear standards in respect to the demands on the efficacy shown by modern (biomathematic) methods, it is essentially a more difficult task to bring the jurisdiction of the Federal Supreme Court (BGH) in harmony with basic requirements of a rational and scientific medicine. The interindividual and intraindividual course of MS is most variable, therefore it is very difficult to make a distinction between natural course and effects of a therapy in a single case while the only possibility to estimate individual therapeutic chance is a statistic evidence of efficacy in general.