Surgery can often correct these defects. Multiple surgeries are often required to achieve normal breathing. This can be caused by a lack of growth hormone, pituitary abnormalities, or unknown causes. An endocrinologist can determine if there is a problem and whether or not it can be treated. Some catch up after the severe medical problems and feeding problems have resolved.
Mental function can vary from severely impaired to normal intelligence.
Patients who are more intellectually impaired seem to have problems with central processing of both auditory and visual information. The misdiagnoses also occurred because a combined vision and hearing loss can make a child seem autistic. Long term research studies are now reporting that other types of learning disabilities, such as communication disorders, attention deficit disorder and obsessive compulsive disorders have been noted. The new research also stresses that early developmental delay is not an accurate indicator of ultimate intellectual potential. In the past, the lack of educational services for children with multisensory problems and the inadequate assessment techniques for these patients resulted in the misdiagnoses.