Acta Med Austriaca. 1994 ; 21(5): 121-4.

[Contact regulation thermography: a useful diagnostic procedure?]

Hentschel C, Lindner M, Ernst E.

Arbeitsgruppe für Traditionelle Medizin und Naturheilverfahren, Medizinische Klinik I mit Poliklinik, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.

Contact regulation thermography is one of the unconventional medical diagnostic procedures, and is based on the individual adaptive behavior of the subject with respect to temperature. Its proponents believe that a specific medical diagnosis can be established on the basis of varying temperature differences. Studies carried out to date have produced mixed results. The increasing use of this procedure, not only in complementary medicine, makes it necessary to undertake a critical examination of the method. Care-providing physicians should question their patients about other unconventional medical diagnostic procedures to which they have been submitted, and inform them about the dubious nature of non-evaluated methods.