Washington, DC - infoZine - The Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers -- Revised, with Follow-Up (M-CHAT-R/F) -- is a free, two-step screening tool used to detect children likely to have autism. It is intended for use at regular well-child checkups for children 16 to 30 months old. With the M-CHAT-R/F, health care providers can classify a child's risk of having autism as low, medium or high, on the basis of parents' answers to 20 questions.
"This checklist can more accurately identify children likely to have autism so they can get the treatment and support they need," said Alice Kau, Ph.D., of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the NIH institute that funded the study. "Given that the typical autism diagnosis occurs at age 4, it also offers the possibility of detecting autism much earlier -- during regular doctor's visits when a child is 18 months or 2 years old. And earlier intervention has been shown to improve outcomes for children with autism."
Based on the M-CHAT-R/F classifications, the researchers found that a smaller proportion of children received a medium- or high-risk assessment (7 percent) than with earlier versions of the checklist (9 percent). However, more total cases of autism were detected with the revised checklist than with earlier versions (67 cases per 10,000 screened vs 45 cases per 10,000 screened).
Of the more than 16,000 children evaluated with the screening tool, 93 percent of the children screened were considered low-risk, 6 percent were in the medium-risk range and 1 percent were considered high-risk.
Of all the children who determined by the test to be at risk after the M-CHAT-R/F follow-up, 95 percent were eventually found to have some form of developmental delay, including more than 47 percent with autism spectrum disorder.
First author Diana L. Robins, Ph.D., of Georgia State University (GSU), in Atlanta, conducted the research with GSU colleague Kars Casagrande, and Marianne Barton, Ph.D., Chi-Ming Chen, Ph.D., Thyde Dumont-Mathieu, M.D., M.P.H., and Deborah Fein, Ph.D., all of the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Dr. Fein was the study's senior author.
The findings appear in Pediatrics.
The free autism screening tool is available online in more than 45 languages.
Related Autism Link http://mchatscreen.com/
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Autism Screening Tool Offers More Precise Assessment