[Chronic musculoskeletal pain--aspects for assessment in private disability compensation (I)].

Pain is the most frequent symptom of diseases of the musculoskeletal system. Moreover pain is the most frequent complaint in applications for governmental or private disability compensation. Since pain remains a subjective sensory perception, it is the task of assessment to prove all the proband's information for consistency. Both multidimensionality of chronic pain and a high impact of psychosomatic comorbidity imply that not only orthopaedic and traumatologic but as well psychosomatic competence for legal assessment is required.