Topical Review: Developmental Screening

Abstract

An estimated 5 to 10% of the pediatric population has a developmental disability. The current strategy to identify these children is through developmental surveillance, a continuous procedure in which the health professional observes the infant, takes a developmental history, and elicits any concerns that the caregiver might have. However, identification of delayed children is ineffective when based solely on routine surveillance. A necessary adjunct is developmental screening: the process of systematically identifying children with suspected delay who need further assessment. Screening tests greatly improve the rate of identification. With the advent of intervention programs and the support of organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the topic of developmental screening is a timely and essential one. This review aims to describe the properties of screening tests, to evaluate the available tools for developmental screening while providing a representative sample of the currently available developmental tests, and, finally, to evaluate the efficacy of intervention programs, a needed prerequisite to justify screening. ( J Child Neurol 2005;20:4—21).