Medical assessment of occupational disability (preparation of a list of occupational diseases with the colaboration of scientific societies)

Amongst the financial benefits given by the Social Security Service, that of disability benefit is one of the most important. To determine the right to obtain this and the amount due, it is necessary to have administrative certification of the existence of this disability, the cause of it and the degree (partial, total, absolute or great disability). Therefore medical assessment is essential. The medical assessors of the Disability Tribunals of the Instituto Nacional de la Seguridad Social are responsible for medical assessment. It is necessary for these doctors to understand all types of disorders and useful for them to have methodology at their disposal for each of the different disorders. Also, lack of official criteria for evaluation, due to the variety of situations which may arise, make unification difficult. We aim to devise criteria for evaluation of the diagnosis, by means of the tests and investigations necessary, their evaluation and the symptoms of each disorder which may cause problems (deficiencies) in the individual person, when carrying out his work (determining which tests and investigations allow this to be shown). Neurology is one of the specialities which offers the greatest difficulty to nonspecialists. This is due to the evaluation of complementary tests used and the subjectivity of some defects. In this paper, we aim to report these difficulties in order to promote collaboration between medical assessors and Neurology specialists.