Dr. Andrés Cánovas Martínez is a neurologist and belongs to Top Doctors, the select circle of top doctors in Spain. As an expert in attention disorders, he will explain the details of their detection and treatment.
What are attention disorders and why do they originate?
Attention disorders are a pathology that occurs in childhood and causes comprehension and communication problems. They are really called attention disorders because it is a very old diagnosis, but it is really a problem of intercerebral communication that causes the IQ to be practically unaware of auditory, visual, abstract problems, etc., which causes comprehension and communication problems, as I said before, and in the end leads to school failure. Why does it occur? It is generally hereditary and it also occurs in premature children and in children who are born with low birth weight and that is why attention deficit disorder has shot up a lot lately, because there are really more and more children with low birth weight and premature children and twin children and so on.
How do I know if my child has it?
Usually parents are the first ones to notice it. They tell the teachers and the teachers say that the child is immature, that he/she will probably mature in due time or that he/she is lazy. Parents notice it because the child has difficulties in social relations with the environment or has difficulties in learning to read and write between 5 and 6 years of age or even earlier. When the children in addition to the attention disorder are hyperactive children, it can be diagnosed by the parents earlier and be seen earlier.
The diagnosis is solely and exclusively clinical. There are many parents who ask what tests can be done. No specific test can be done to the child to know if he/she has an attention disorder or not and the diagnosis is, as I have said, only and exclusively clinical, that is to say the clinical history, asking the parents how the child behaves and the parents when they talk about how the child behaves and the doctor has enough experience and sees the child in the consultation room how he/she behaves. The diagnosis is practically immediate, in an interval of 10-15 min the diagnosis can be made clearly if the child has an attention disorder, with or without hyperactivity.
What does the treatment consist of, is there a cure?
Attention deficit disorder can be cured. As I said before, it is a problem of neurotransmitters that causes the area where the IQ is not properly connected with the rest of the brain, which produces the attention disorder. And really what we use at the moment is a series of drugs, which are many available, which are psychostimulants, which theoretically should make the patient nervous, but what they stimulate is the brain and therefore stimulate attention and make the child who would have bad grades and who has difficulties in learning, these difficulties disappear, These difficulties disappear, the grades improve noticeably, the self-esteem improves noticeably and the patient’s frustration decreases a lot and then, although only 10% of them are not cured and can be cured all their lives with the treatment, 80-90% are completely cured with puberty between 16-20 years of age and the treatment can be suspended calmly.