Abstract
Objective:
This study aimed to assess cases diagnosed with any disorder that would be included within the broad title pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) according to DSM-IV-TR classifi cation, to determine the cases’ clinical and sociodemographic features and to compare the subtypes.
Method:
The medical records of the cases that had applied to our unit between the dates May 15, 2012 and May 15, 2013 were screened. Demographic and clinical features of cases with PDD were assessed and SPSS 17.0 program was used for statistical analysis.
Results:
Out of a total 25,013 applicants, 298 (1.2%) met the criteria for PDD spectrum. Mean age of the cases was 8.7±3.9 years; 79.5% were boys (n=237) and 77.2% were a resident in Ankara province at the time of the study. Sixty- three percent of the cases (n=188) were diagnosed with autistic disorder while 31.2% (n=93), 5% (n=15), and 0.7% (n=2) were diagnosed with PDD-not otherwise specifi ed (PDD-NOS), Rett Syndrome, and Asperger Syndrome, respectively. At least one comorbid psychiatric disorder was found in 50.3% of the sample (n=150). For girls, presence of comorbid severe mental retardation (11.5%, n=11) and epilepsy (14.8%, n=9) were found to be signifi cantly more frequent then boys (p=0.018, p=0.008, respectively). It was found that 27.9% of the cases (n=83) had been using at least one and/or more medication with the most commonly recommended drug being risperidone by 61.4% (n=51) and that the presence of a psychiatric comorbidity was a predictor of psychotropic medication use (p=0.017).
Discussion:
The most frequently encountered disorder within PDD was autism and the fi nding regarding epilepsy comorbidity in the clinical picture for female gender was noticed. The presence of any other comorbid psychiatric disorder that was observed for approximately every other case was a predictor of psychotropic medication use at the same time.
Keywords: Autism, comorbidity, epilepsy, pervasive developmental disorder.
