From the study of well-known divergent amplitudes we deduce three cons
istency conditions which are necessary and sufficient to eliminate amb
iguities and symmetry violations. The conditions relate divergent inte
grals of the same degree of divergence and are automatically satisfied
within the context of dimensional regularization. We show how the ded
uced consistency conditions can be satisfied in four-dimensional regul
arizations. An important conclusion of the present study is the possib
ility of working with PD regularization schemes which preserve the vir
tues of dimensional regularization avoiding, however, its restrictions
.