Autism Treatment Medical Malpractice Lawyers

Autism Treatment-Medical Malpractice Law Firm

The following information on autism treatment is provided by Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald Medical Malpractice law firm.  The firm represents children with autism and other disorders and has recovered millions for its young clients, including $1,580,000 for a child with an autism spectrum disorder.  In that case, Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald successfully argued that its client's autism was caused by lead poisoning.  The landlord of the apartment where the child had resided had failed to paint over the old lead paint, and the hospital where the child received care failed to test the child for lead until the child reached 2 years of age.

If your child has autism, ADD or ADHD, cerebral palsy, learning disabilities, seizures, or any medical or social disorder, contact Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald for a free consultation by calling toll-free at 1-800-323-9900 or submitting the firm's online contact form .  It costs you nothing to find out if a autism medical malpractice lawyer can help.

Autism Treatment – Traditional and Alternative Approaches

Before autism treatment, one needs to be certain that a child has been properly diagnosed.  To insure that a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is correct, it should be made by a pediatrician familiar with ASD (hereinafter referred to generally as “autism”), a child or pediatric neurologist, or a child and adolescent psychiatrist.

Historically, the treatment of autism has been complicated by the fact that the causes of autism are largely unknown.  Therefore, therapies have focused heavily on educational and behavioral interventions.  More recently, pharmacological (drug) treatments using psychoactive drugs have been studied (refs) and a large variety of alternative autism treatments including vitamins, diet, and antiviral drugs have been explored.

Major autism treatment approaches fall into two broad categories: 1) traditional treatments 2) alternative treatments.  The traditional approaches have focused on treating the symptoms with rather traditional therapies (behavioral, educational, and drugs) while the alternative approaches have focused more on treating putative causes of autism (viruses, opioid-hypothesis, vitamin deficiency, etc).

Traditional Autism Treatment Approaches

• Educational and behavioral interventions
• Psychoactive drugs
• Other

Alternative Autism Treatment Approaches

• Secretin-intravenous or transdermal
• Vitamin therapies
• Casein-free, gluten-free diets
• Antiviral drugs

References:

1. Bethea, T.C., L. Sikich (2007). Early pharmacological treatment of autism: a rationale for developmental treatment. Biological Psychiatry 61(4):521-537.
2. Lord, C., Cook, E.H., Leventhal, B.L., D.G. Amaral (2000). Autism Spectrum Disorders. Neuron 28:355-363.
3. Alternative therapies http://www.healing-arts.org/children/ Website of Lewis Mehl-Madrona, M.D./Ph.D.