[Development and current possibilities of cerebrospinal fluid diagnosis in the routine laboratory. 1. Cytological and microbiological studies and methods of chemical analysis].

Although there are many precisely working procedures for diagnostic examinations of cerebrospinal fluid, very often methods are used which do not fulfill conditions of adequate quality. The aim of this survey of several cytological and chemical methods, of their development during the past 80 years, of their advantages or disadvantages, and of the various difficulties is to contribute to a discussion on improvement of quality and on unification of laboratory methods regarding diagnostic examinations of cerebrospinal fluid. Several procedures to separate protein fractions or single proteins in cerebrospinal fluid will be discussed in the second part of this paper.