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DO CHILDREN WITH AUTISM AND DEVELOPMENTAL REGRESSION NEED EEG INVESTIGATION IN THE ABSENCE OF CLINICAL SEIZURES?
A child presents to your developmental clinic at 30 months old. His mother reports developmental regression of previously acquired developmental milestones. He has now lost his language skills and only makes incomprehensible babbles. He is otherwise clinically well and does not have clinical seizures. From his early history and current behaviour your clinical diagnosis is autism. You wonder whether an electroencephalogram (EEG) should be performed to rule out possible underlying subclinical epilepsy that may contribute to developmental regression.
Structured clinical question
In a seizure-free child with autism presenting with developmental regression [patient] is EEG [intervention] necessary to rule out subclinical epilepsy [outcome]?
Search strategy
The search date was March 2007.
Primary sources
Medline (1966–2007) was searched with four searches: “autism” AND “developmental delay” AND “EEG”; “autism” AND “developmental delay” AND “EEG” OR “epilepsy”; “autism regression” AND “EEG” OR “epilepsy”; “autism” and “developmental regression” AND “EEG” OR “epilepsy”; “pervasive developmental delay” AND “EEG” OR “epilepsy”.
Limits were human, English language, all children (0–18 years).
Secondary sources
The Cochrane Library yielded no relevant results.
Search outcome
No systematic reviews were found. A total of 258 papers were identified, of which four were relevant. There …
Footnotes
Competing interests: None.