Alcohol abuse affects her ability to care properly for her children throughout childhood. As with many birth defects, optimal care requires coordinated effort from many groups, including providers of health care, social services, and schools. We were concerned that, without well-defined criteria, any developmental delay or behavioral abnormality in children whose mothers had any level of alcohol intake might lead to inappropriate labeling with the FAS diagnosis. The criteria recommended are as close as possible to those commonly used by workers in this field and, at the same time, follow the guidelines generally used for setting diagnostic criteria in other areas of medicine. A consideration of diagnostic criteria brought out the fact that many infants with FAS are not being diagnosed at birth, either because they cannot be or because professionals do not have the tools and training to do so.
Pattern recognition is part of the diagnostic criteria in a disease of dysmorphogenesis.
This is an important issue when one considers surveillance approaches that might be applicable on a public health basis. The committee was impressed that this area needs some focused clinical research before widespread surveillance approaches can be recommended. Such research and field testing is considered an urgent priority. Also relevant to both diagnosis and prevention is the issue of whether there are problems of development or behavior from any alcohol intake, no matter how low, during pregnancy. Since this is not yet known, the committee focused on the constellation of infant problems for which good evidence exists of a relationship with maternal abuse of alcohol.