Hi,

I just wanted to see if anyone knows of what tests should be done when looking into diagnosing stomach problems in a teen with autism. I know that gut problems are relatively common with children on the spectrum. However, until recently we never had any obvious signs of her having problems. My daughter is going to be 18 in November and has just for the past 3 years now begun to exhibit stomach problems. She is non-verbal. She can't really explain the pain she is in nor her symptoms. She cries at times and using her Dynavox can ask for the heating pad but can't really describe what she is going through. I've given her Tylenol for the pain and it seems to help because usually within the hour she is back to her normal happy self. She's had vomiting and pain. She sometimes doesn't want to eat and has become very picky with her eating. She has lost some weight, about 6 lbs. which concerns me because she is very thin to begin with. We saw a pediatric GI doctor thru Kaiser but he wasn't very helpful besides running some blood tests and restricting her diet from dairy and carbonated drinks he didn't do much else.

Recently we took her to an adult GI doctor. He ran some blood work and did a CT scan of her abdomen with contrast yesterday to try to find out what the problem is. Is there any other suggestions you can offer me? I know after her doctor gets the results of these tests the next thing he wants to do is an endoscopy. He will have to put her under General Anesthesia for that test. We are hoping these test show something more concreate otherwise I won't know where to go from there. If you have any other suggestions I would really appreciate it.