An investigation of the utility of the Australian Guide to the Diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder in young children

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Dawe, Sharon
Eggins, Elizbeth
Betts, Joseph
Webster, Heidi
Pomario, Tania
Doak, Jessica
Chandler-Mather, Ned
Hatzis, Denise
Till, Haydn
Harnett, Paul
Wood, Andrew
Shelton, Doug
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2023
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Abstract

Background: Early diagnosis of children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) assists in implementing critical early support. The challenge lies in having a diagnostic process that enables valid and reliable assessment of domains of functioning in young children, with the added complexity that many children will also have co-occurring exposure to childhood adversity that is likely to impact these domains. Methods: The aim of this study was to test a diagnostic assessment of FASD in young children using the Australian Guide to the Diagnosis of FASD. Ninety-four children (aged 3 to 7 years) with confirmed or suspected prenatal alcohol exposure were referred to two specialist FASD clinics for assessment in Queensland, Australia. Results: There was a significant risk profile with 68.1% (n = 64) children having had contact with child protection services, and most children living in kinship (n = 22, 27.7%) or foster (n = 36, 40.4%) care. Forty-one percent of the children were Indigenous Australians. The majority (64.9%, n = 61) of children met criteria for FASD, 30.9% were classified as “At Risk” for FASD (n = 29), and 4.3% received no FASD diagnosis (n = 4). Only 4 (4%) children were rated as severe for the brain domain. Over 60% of children (n = 58) had two or more comorbid diagnoses. Sensitivity analyses indicated that the removal of comorbid diagnoses in the Attention, Affect Regulation, or Adaptive Functioning domains resulted in a change in 7 of 47 cases (15%) to an “At Risk” designation. Conclusions: These results highlight the complexity of presentation and the extent of impairment in the sample. The use of comorbid diagnoses to substantiate a “severe” designation in specific neurodevelopmental domains raises the question of whether there were false-positive diagnoses. The complexity of determining causal relationships between exposure to PAE and early life adversity on developmental outcomes continues to be a challenge in this young population.

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Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research

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47

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3

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© 2023 The Authors. Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Research Society on Alcohol. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

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Psychiatry (incl. psychotherapy)

Clinical sciences

Biological psychology

Clinical and health psychology

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Life Sciences & Biomedicine

Substance Abuse

fetal alcohol spectrum disorder

neurodevelopment

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Dawe, S; Eggins, E; Betts, J; Webster, H; Pomario, T; Doak, J; Chandler-Mather, N; Hatzis, D; Till, H; Harnett, P; Wood, A; Shelton, D, An investigation of the utility of the Australian Guide to the Diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder in young children, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 2023, 47 (3), pp. 486-500

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