Children with autism spectrum disorders - The importance of medical investigations

Background: Considerable knowledge about medical comorbidity in cases of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is available, still it is not well established how extensive the medical investigations should be in individual cases. The aim is to explore proportions of possible specific medical conditions in ASD. Methods: 79 subjects went through extensive medical evaluations according to pre-defined procedures, including medical and developmental history, physical and biomedical investigations. Results: Clinical neurological findings were quite common, and we found a high number of pathological findings in the additional medical investigations. Our study revealed that these pathological deviations occurred more frequently in patients with childhood autism than in the other diagnostic sub-groups, the exception were chromosomal findings which occurred more often in patients not-diagnosed with childhood autism. Conclusion: Medical and laboratory investigations should still be performed as a consequence of the patient's history, clinical presentations or family history. We should basically continue the use of non-routine and invasive procedures which do not put the patient at some unnecessary risk, in the absence of relevant clinical indications. (C) 2012 European Paediatric Neurology Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.