FAS. The key to treating and helping a child with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is early diagnosis, which leads to early treatment. A doctor makes a diagnosis of FAS based upon the history of the pregnancy and the physical examination. Certain defects that a doctor may look for to determine if a baby has FAS is small for gestational age, failure to thrive despite good nutrition, low birth weight and height, craniofacial deformities, small brain size, impaired fine motor skills, memory deficits, and many more. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is also determined by confirmed prenatal exposure to alcohol by the mother (http://www.arbi.org.). Nationwide our communities are not well informed and educated on the dangers of consuming alcohol during pregnancy. In fact most health care providers are unfamiliar with and untrained in the issues of substance abuse amid pregnant women. Fetal Alcohol syndrome is very often misdiagnosed and under diagnosed which may be due to the fact that less then 10% of medical schools require students to take a course on the proper diagnosis and referral of individuals with alcoholism or other drug addictions. Specifically training health care professionals in the diagnosis and treatment of FAS will increase the ability to prevent it and helping those already affected by it. The Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation assembled a national panel to discuss FAS and health care professionals. The panel found that most doctors do not try to identify alcohol or drug problems by simply asking the patients questions and do not know how to respond to a situation if they do find evidence that there may be an addiction. Alarmed by this the panel called for an increase in mandatory training on substance abuse (http://www.nofas.org)There are two types of disabilities associated with FAS, primary and secondary. Primary disabilities are those that are “inherently part of FAS and a direct result of the prenatal exposure to the teratogenic ...
