الفهرس 
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Abstract
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) defined as range of complex neurodevelopmental disorders, characterized by impairments in social and communication skills as well as restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior and movement.
Autism caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors influencing early brain development. The clearest evidence of these autism risk factors involves prenatal, natal and postnatal events. They include advanced parental age at time of conception, maternal illness during pregnancy and certain difficulties during birth, particularly postnatal hypoxia.
The current study was conducted to assess knowledge of health care workers about Autism symptoms and signs, to compare the level of knowledge among health care workers and to identify factors affecting the level of knowledge among health care workers.
The current study was a Cross sectional study, conducted on 110 participants 67 physicians, 43 nurses from 3 family center in Cairo governorate which are Saraya-El –Qobba, First settlement and EL –Qatamya.
The data was collected using an Arabic self-administered modified version of KCAHW (Knowledge about childhood autism among health workers) Questionnaire for general socio-demographic information such as age, gender, marital status, qualification degree, occupation, numbers of years of practice, main sources of health information and previous experience dealing with autistic child also questions about basic knowledge of autism symptoms, signs, age of onset, etiological factors and treatment options.
The current study showed poor level of knowledge about autism among primary care workers, most of the respondents have a general misconception regarding age of onset of autism, symptoms and signs, autistic child is a mentally retarded, etiological factors and treatment modalities. Nurses have a very low level about autism in comparison with physicians.
Many factors attributed to this knowledge such as years of practice, age, gender, specialty and previous experience of dealing with autistic child either in clinical training or know a case of autism child, which is the most important factor to identify autism features.
Level of knowledge was positively correlated with age and years of practice among GPs.
Most of the participants depended on training courses which conducted by MOHP, lectures and media to enrich their health information.