Guidelines Urge Doctors to Monitor Children's Motor Development

Detecting motor development delay in children can lead to early treatment.  A panel of pediatricians has come up with a new set of guidelines that require doctors to assess a child's motor development at each visit.

The panel has said that early diagnosis can lead to interventions and better treatment planning. The guidelines say that doctors must check whether or not a child is developing motor skills that other children of his/her age are developing. A child who is 9 month old, for example, should be able to roll on both sides and sit without support.

"Identifying children with delays and motor abnormalities, theoretically or hopefully would set them on a better trajectory," said Meghann Lloyd, who studies motor development at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa, Canada. Lloyd wasn't part of the current team that developed the guidelines, reports Reuters Health.

The panel also recommended that doctors ask open-ended questions to parents about their children's development, which can aid monitoring the motor skill development of their children.

According to the guidelines, the initial responsibility of identifying a child with motor development delay rests with the medical home. The algorithm developed by the panel can improve healthcare of the children.

"We're hoping that people can get to a specialist more quickly and thus get diagnosed more quickly, but that primary care clinicians at the same time as they're looking for a diagnosis, will refer (kids) to therapy," Dr. Garey Noritz, who authored the guidelines, told Reuters Health.

The guidelines are published in the journal Pediatrics.