Original ArticleDetecting, Studying, and Treating Autism Early: The One-Year Well-Baby Check-Up Approach
Section snippets
Methods
The overall design of the study included establishing a network of pediatricians throughout San Diego County and initiating a systematic screening program for all infants at the 1-year check-up. Conceptually, the program included five parts. First, pediatricians and their staff participated in a 1-hour educational seminar that provided general information about autism, as well as instruction regarding implementation and scoring of a screening tool to be used at all 1-year well-baby visits.
Screening Form Failures and Referrals
A total of 10 479 screens were administered; the mean age at screening was 12.54 months (range 10.08 to 15.97 months). On the basis of the 10th percentile cutoff scores that were used,17 it was expected that approximately 1047 infants would fail the screening. In our San Diego sample, 1318 children failed the screening (12.5 %); 346 were referred to our laboratory as indicated by the referral check box. Compliance, for purposes of this study, is defined as the rate of parent enrollment of their
Discussion
On the basis of 10 479 simple screening forms administered at the first-year pediatric examination, 32 infants were identified as having ASD. Current epidemiologic estimates report that 65 of every 10 000 infants born will be diagnosed as having an ASD by early childhood.22 Given that late onset (approximately 20% of cases), regression (25% of cases23), and Asperger’s cases (10% of cases24) would not be expected to be detected by screening at the first birthday, rates obtained by this study are
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Supported by Organization for Autism Research, Autism Speaks (formerly Cure Autism Now), and NIMH (R01-MH080134 to K.P). The authors declare no conflicts of interest.