Rheumatic complaints in general practice.

R HEUMATIC complaints are among the commonest of the certificated causes of sickness absence from work (Report of Ministry of Pensions 1966). Such painful disorders of the locomotor system are common in general practice: in the study by the College of General Practitioners and the Registrar General's Office, the prevalence rate of this group of conditions was second only to that for nasopharyngitis (Logan and Cushion 1958). In a more detailed analysis of data from that study, Walford (1962) estimated that one person in nine consults a family doctor every year because ofrheumatic complaints. The pattern of rheumatic conditions in that survey showed a predominance of 'non-articular rheumatism', thus differing markedly from that seen in the hospital department of rheumatology with its preponderance of 'arthritis'. These observations were made in the absence of agreed diagnostic criteria among the participating doctors, and in the face of the shortcomings of the World Health Organization's International Statistical Classification with regard to the rheumatic disorders.