Treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactive disorder. (What Parents Want To Know About).

Children are diagnosed with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) with increasing frequency. Its cause is still unknown. There is a wealth of information and misinformation about how to treat children diagnosed with ADHD. To address this problem, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published clinical practice guidelines on the treatment of ADHD in the October, 2001, issue of Pediatrics.

The guidelines were developed by a subcommittee composed of primary care and developmental-behavior pediatricians and other experts in the fields of neurology, psychology, child psychiatry, education, family practice, and epidemiology. This subcommittee partnered with the Agency for Health-Care Research and Quality and Evidence-based Practice Center at McMaster University in Canada to develop and review the published evidence in this field.

This review, along with other important studies, including treatment studies in this area, and the Canadian Coordinating Office for Health Technology Assessment report, were used to formulate the recommendations. Where definitive evidence was not available, subcommittee consensus decisions were made.

The subcommittee consensus report underwent extensive review by sections and committees of the AAP, as well as by…