Tarptautinė ligų klasifikacija ir mediciniškai nepaaiškinami negalavimai
International Classification of Diseases and Medically Unexplained Disorders

Summary/Abstract: This article focuses on the evolution of perception and definition of health and illness and concurrent substantial changes in the medical classifications of diseases and medicine itself. The article starts with discussion of the socio-economic developments in modern and late modern / postmodern societies that have generated substantial changes in the medical conception of health and illness. It turns then to the analysis of developments in the International Classification of Diseases. The article demonstrates how this Classification progressively moves from a relatively simple grouping of causes of death to an increasingly complex classification of diseases and causes of death, based on expanding scientific knowledge about the disease etiology. The place of medically unclear, unexplained symptoms and syndromes in various versions of the Classification is described. In the early versions of the International Classification of Diseases these symptoms were attributed to concrete disease categories, however, with the 6th version and with increasing recognition that medical science cannot assign all known symptoms to separate disease categories, a separate classification of these symptoms occurs. Starting with the 9th version of the International Classification of Diseases the social factors affecting health are increasingly being recognized. Finally, advances in medical science and the changing conception of health and illness lead to a separate section on social factors affecting health in the 10th version of International Classification of Diseases. It is concluded that contemporary Classification attempts to combine three conceptions of health and illness: the biomedical, the biopsychosocial and the postmodern (arche-health) which best suit to explain the medically unexplained disorders.

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