Abstract
The ophthalmologic assessment of causal relationships is subject to formal guidelines,
depending on the legal field (social law in the statutory accident insurance, civil
law in the private accident insurance). After determining all objective and subjective
findings of the individual case with complete recording of the medical facts, the
ophthalmologist has the task of making a summarizing assessment of the existing cause-and-effect
relationship. With regard to the distinction between retinal damage caused by an accident
or retinal disease not caused by an accident, it is necessary to weigh up the natural
causality according to the state of medical experience on the basis of the criteria
strength of association, consistency, specificity, temporal sequence, dose dependence,
agreement with previous findings, experimental reliability and analogous consideration.
All records of medical findings from the patientʼs medical history and the individual
description of the accident
must be included in the expert opinion. In the case of several competing causes
(often accident and pre-existing damage), the social law in the statutory accident
insurance must present the causal contributions with roughly estimated probabilities.
In civil law, valid for the private accident insurance, the existence of partial causality
(approx. 25, 50, 75%) must be evaluated.
Key words
retinal detachment - causal relationship - accident insurance - expert opinion - ocular
disease - ophthalmologist
