title: Diagnosis of pervasive developmental disorders: when and how? An area-based study about health care providers.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Pervasive developmental disorders (PDDs) can be very difficult to diagnose in children and to communicate such a diagnosis to their parents. Families of children with PDD learn of their child's diagnosis long after the first symptoms are noted in the child's behavior.
  
  
  METHODS
  An area-based survey was conducted to assess all social and health care providers taking care of patients with PDDs in the Veneto Region (North-East Italy).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Only 28% of health care providers arrived at a definite diagnosis when the child was in his/her first year of age, 51% when the child was 2-3 years old and 21% from age of 4 years and up. On average, the latency between the time of the diagnosis and its communication to the family was 6.9 months. However, a number of families did not ever have a diagnosis communicated to them. Sometimes, 68% of the providers did not communicate a PDDs diagnosis to patient's families, and 4% of them quite commonly.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The well-known delay in making a diagnosis of PDDs has two distinct components: one relating to the difficulty of confirming a diagnosis of PDDs, the other, hitherto unrecognized, relating to the family being notified.
authors.affiliation: Veneto Region Child & Mother Health Observatory, Epidemiology and Community Medicine Unit, Department of Pediatrics, Padua University, Padua, Italy, manea@pediatria.unipd.it.
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Manea
authors.forename: Laura Visonà
authors.initials: LV
authors.lastname: Dalla Pozza
authors.forename: Monica
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mazzucato
authors.forename: Oliviana
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Gelasio
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Facchin
mesh_terms: D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000175:diagnosis*; D003142:Communication; D057210:Delayed Diagnosis / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D016015:Logistic Models