Screening, identification and evaluation of autism spectrum disorders in primary health care

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is a terminology present in the literature over the past two decades. It represents a group of disorders with common basic expressions in different degrees 1–3 which are pervasive developmental disorders such as children's autism, Asperger syndrome and pervasive disorder – not otherwise specified 4, . The reasons for separating and assembling these three disorders are that they have common basic behavioral manifestations (clinical signs) and are relatively well defined as autistic syndrome, although the degree of expression may vary in different extent. Precisely, these differences in the presence and degree of basic clinical characteristics represent the spectrum of autism disorders.