Autism Health Video

Video Transcript

DR. JENNIFER LYONS: Hi, I'm Dr. Jennifer Lyons and I'm a pediatrician at the Vancouver Clinic in Vancouver, Washington. I'm going to talk today about autism. Autism refers to a set of developmental problems which include three groups of symptoms. The first and main symptom is poor social skills; this includes difficulty with understanding and responding to verbal and non-verbal cues. The second group is what we called the stereotyped behaviors such as hand flapping or head banging. The third is speech delay. There is a wide range of symptoms severity and the diagnosis of autism requires a fair amount of clinical expertise. No one symptom makes the diagnosis. Additionally, 80% of autism cases appear congenitally. Those infants display several characteristics early on such as poor eye contact, excessive sound or texture sensitivity, and a big red flag is failure to response to his/her name by age 1. The other 20% of autism cases are termed regressive with a period of seemingly normal development, and then a loss of milestones often around 15 to 18 months of age. It is this wide range of severity with the long list of symptoms that may present over the first 1 to 4 years of life that make the diagnosis of autism difficult. This is also why it's difficult to study autism. From the perspective of a pediatrician, having a diagnosis of autism is merely a way to discuss treatment and a way to qualify for services. The only clinically proven treatments include early and aggressive therapy, including speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy when needed. Despite the wealth of information on the internet, autism has no known cause. Vaccines have repeatedly been shown to be safe and well-performed nationally recognized studies, children who received their shots on time had no increase risk of autism over children who did not receive their vaccines. The good news with all the controversy in the media is that parents and pediatricians are becoming more informed about the science of autism, allowing for earlier diagnosis, earlier intervention, and what we hope would be improved outcomes.