New, improved guidelines for diagnosing fetal alcohol spectrum disorder
The proposed guidelines include a new definition of documented prenatal alcohol exposure, guides to evaluating facial and physical deformities characteristic of FASD, and updated information about the cognitive and/or behavioral impairments seen in different FASD subtypes. "These new guidelines will be a valuable resource for clinicians to accurately diagnose infants and children who were affected by alcohol exposure before birth," said NIAAA Director George F. Koob, PhD. "They represent the most data-driven diagnostic criteria for fetal alcohol syndrome and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder produced to date." The updated guidelines were developed and accepted by the Collaboration on FASD Prevalence (CoFASP), which studies the prevalence of FASD among U.S. school children, and NIAAA's Collaborative Initiative on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (CIFASD), which investigates data-driven methods for diagnosing FASD. The paper currently appears online in Pedi