Early Diagnosis & Intervention are Key In Identifying Autism-Open Door Care Network Ossining offers Guidance

You’re concerned your young child may be on the autism
spectrum.

Yet the earliest appointment you can make with a specialist
may take as long as a year and a half.

This is why pediatricians like Dr. Andrew Swiderski, who
works at the Open Door Care Network in Ossining, offer preliminary diagnostic testing
that can begin to answer worried parents’ questions.

For example, Dr. Swiderski may hand his young patient a toy
cell phone, encouraging the child to push the buttons that produce various
sounds. Then he covers the keyboard with his fingers.

“Usually, a child will look up at me or his parent and say,
‘Why are you doing this?’ He’s made the connection that I
interrupted his play,” said Dr Swiderski. “A child with autism will
instead get mad at my hand. He won’t look at me and doesn’t make the
connection that a person is involved.”

This is one of Dr. Swiderski’s “bag of tricks” that he
offers when a diagnosis is suspected. Additionally, he encourages the
parents of his patients to use an app (available in English and Spanish)
produced by the CDC that provides a “milestone tracker” for monitoring their
child’s development.

“Autism is a devastating diagnosis, and many providers are
afraid to make it, fearing it labels the patient with a permanent condition
that requires the involvement of many specialists and therapists,” said Dr.
Swiderski. “Parents go into a panic. But the pediatrician should be
the first to see this, as well as other delays in normal development. The
big window is between six months and four years, a critical time to identify
and look at this before school starts.”

An ever-increasing number of children are diagnosed with
autism not because there is more autism than before, but because of increased
awareness and more frequent testing, experts say.

Pediatricians, said Dr. Swiderski, represent the “front
line” in diagnosing these conditions. At Open Door, they work
hand-in-hand with the health care center’s Behavioral Health providers so that
these children can be referred to specialists so they don’t fall through the
cracks.

Parents,
he said, often ask for help if they notice their young child suffers from any
one or more of a number of different symptoms: such as an inability to respond to social
interactions or pick up on non-verbal cues, poor eye contact, lack of interest
in others, little imaginative play, repetitive movements, or ritualized
behaviors. Contrary to some conspiracy
theorists, he added, there is no evidence to indicate links to any
environmental or lifestyle issues, such as vaccines, foods or toxins. It does, however, run in families, where it
is not uncommon to find two children with autism in the same family.

“I
tell parents what features resemble autism and what don’t and through my
testing come up with a preliminary conclusion and, if necessary, refer them to
a specialist,” he said. “Parents are
scared stiff and want to know.”