[Environment-related health disorders. Experience and perspectives in the care of patients with environment-related health disorders]

Abstract

Environmental medicine outpatient clinics, counseling centers, and practicing physicians have observed environment-related health disorders in patient groups of mixed age as well as for groups consisting only of adults or children. Practicing physicians suspected correlations between environmental factors and health disorders in 36-45% of cases, environmental medicine outpatient clinics and counseling centers in 4-34% for mixed-age groups, 0-24% for adults, and 9-13% for children. A comparison of these data is difficult due to differences in data acquisition, evaluation methods, and descriptive statistics used. Furthermore, data on children are insufficient. Patient-oriented environmental medicine faces a number of problems regarding determination of exposure, effects, and susceptibility, including a lack of scientifically verified cause-and-effect models as well as incorrect diagnoses, attributions, and conclusions. In view of the scope and intensity of environment-related health disorders, the topic cannot be ignored. A functioning program of environmental medicine counseling and patient care is needed for practicing physicians, universities and/or the public sector to deliver effective primary medical care in this field. As always, the building blocks of environ-mental medicine counseling are medical history, physical examination, differential diagnosis, human biomonitoring, and on-site inspection with environmental monitoring while also taking gender differences into account. Uniform basic documentation procedures and health science analyses will help to optimize patient care in environ-mental medicine. The value of a diagnostic algorithm in the care of patients with environment-related health disorders is beyond dispute. Last but not least, quality assurance and control are a sine qua non of patient-oriented environmental medicine.