Autism Diagnosis
Diagnosis of autism can be beneficial when it is done at the early stage. Autism diagnosis includes the patient's neurological examination, medical history and medical tests. Generally, physicians evaluate the children's language and communication skills and interaction using different screening tools. As autism is a psychological or behavioral disease, there are no lab tests that can diagnose the disease. They can observe the child's behavior and ask various questions to the parents about children's development.
Following are the factors that come under autism diagnosis:
Behavior Observation
The diagnosis of autism is based on the behavior of the child and the symptoms that are detected by the parents. The children may have the symptoms that will show the problems or difficulties in social interaction and communication. For example, the child may use repetitive language, stereotype behavior or some abnormal behavior.
Interview
There are some instruments that help to assess the behavior of the child. Autism Diagnostic Interview Revised (ADI-R) and the Autism Observation Schedule (ADOS) are the two mostly used tools to research on the autism disease. The previous one is used to interview the parents, and the later one is about the interaction and observation of the child. Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) is very helpful to determine the severity of autism from the children's observation.
Clinical Genetics
When the children have the symptoms that show genetics as the cause of autism, a clinical genetics evaluation is performed to diagnose autism. Genetics technology has showed that about 40% cases of autism are the result of genetics. The new test of genetics can raise many legal, social and ethical issues.
Physical Examination
Generally, a pediatrician performs some physical examinations. These tests and examinations may help to identify the causes of the disease. Sometimes the psychological changes affect children's physical development. Hence, doctors perform some physical tests to understand the autism symptoms and its affects.
Autism diagnosis can be performed during the first three years of children's life. Doctors believe that in this period autism can be diagnosed easily and can be treated with proper therapy. However, in some cases, the diagnosis is done after the fifth year. It is observed that 27% of the children in U.S. are undiagnosed in 2009.
The changes in the practice of the diagnosis have raised some problems regarding overdiagnosis and underdiagnosis of the disease. The overdiagnosis autism in children has contributed in the increase of using medicines for autism treatment. This situation also caused some uncertain symptoms in the children that can be directly related to the autism disease.
Diagnosing autism also has some problems that causes in the increased undiagnosed children. The diagnosis of autisms cannot be done to a child with visual impairment, as some diagnostic criteria are based on the vision of the patient. The increasing cost of diagnostic tests and screening also proved as the obstacle in the autism diagnosis in the world.
