Dr. Christopher Jamil Allen, MD

Ahhhh Dr. Allen only cared about my sons sleep & doing sleep study of my child versus the reason we were referred to him in the first place. My son had a CT scan after a fall, the CT scan showed something on the brain only to be explained as some type of cysts. We visited Dr. Allen’s office due to this but all he cared about was his sleep & REFUSED to do a MRI without a sleep study done. So we did, then we had to see a ear, nose, & throat specialist. Then we had to schedule a surgery to remove his tonsils. Few days prior to his surgery he came down with a bad upper respiratory infection, surgery was canceled. We had to reschedule a new appt to see the E.N.T for a follow up/recheck. So we did. It was determined he no longer needed to get his tonsils removed as they went from a size 4 to a 1. Told ent If he didn’t need the surgery I’d rather him not have it. He agreed. Back to dr Allen’s we went. HE MADE MY SON HAVE ANOTHER SLEEP STUDY DONE! We did it cuz we just wanted some answers on… our son. I took dr Allen the CT results. After that I didn’t hear from his office again until…..almost 2 years later after I personally made the choice to call U of M to have my son seen by a pediatric neurologist, and was waitlisted two years. When he finally got in this past year at u of m, after his 1st appt at u of m, dr Allen’s office calls to ask me if my son needed a follow up appt with them or If he was “better now”. At this point we didn’t know what was wrong with him yet cuz he had just his first new patient visit @ u of m. After his MRI, that dr Allen refused to do with sedation and wouldn’t even try without sedation, we have found out that my son has possibly had a stroke. Three different parts of his brain are showing black spots, or trauma spots. I’m beyond sick to my stomach that dr Allen didn’t even take the time to care enough for my son to even try to care about anything we were even in his office for. ??

My son is a patient of Dr. Allen’s and we had all good visits. Dr. Allen was very through, friendly, professional, and concerned along with making my son comfortable with by telling jokes (one of which my son still remembers and giggles). I would recommend Dr. Allen to parents looking for a Pediatric Neurologist. This is our third neurologist and he’s the best one yet.

If I could rate this physician zero stars, I would. Our son was treated by Dr. Allen at Covenant Hospital after experiencing seizure episodes where our child stopped breathing and required resuscitation. After being examined by Dr. Allen, he had come to the conclusion that our child, who was 3 at the time and has severe nonverbal autism, was “faking” his seizures and “doing it for attention”; this was his conclusion based on an EEG that was done the day after our child experienced his seizure episodes. According to Allen, all seizures show up on an EEG regardless of when the activity was (which is, in fact, not true, as we later learned from specialists at the University of Michigan…although, a simple google search later on could have informed of this otherwise.). Later, after a follow-up with our child’s then cardiologist, an MRI was requested only because the cardiologist, a colleague of Allen’s, had questioned why one wasn’t already ordered, and Allen “respect(s) his opinion”.… Following the MRI, Allen had his receptionist call us with the results versus making the phone call himself, to inform us our son’s diagnosis; Periventricular Nodular Heterotopia. Periventricular Nodular Heterotopia (PVNH) is a rare genetic brain disease. It is so rare, that the incidence is unknown. PVNH is extremely rare in males as males typically show early lethality, and most often do not survive birth; if a male does, their life expectancy is typically shortened. PVNH can effect a multitude of systems from neurological effects including seizures in nearly 90% of patients diagnosed with PVNH, to pulmonary disease, to cardiovascular findings such as spontaneous aortic rupture or dissection, to gastric complications such as gastric immotility, as well as some patients experiencing connective tissue anomalies including Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. When we received this phone call from Allen’s receptionist, she wanted us to be rest assured that Allen insisted “PVNH isn’t a big deal” as it “only causes developmental delays” to which we “already know (our) child is delayed” and that Allen did not want to see us for a visit anytime soon, but just to follow up with him in another 6 months. After doing my own research via Google Scholar, and finding out that yes, PVNH is indeed a “big deal”, we called the University of Michigan to schedule a follow up with a pediatric neurologist there. Not only did they also want our child to be seen by a geneticist, but at our visit, both their Genetics department and their Neurology department at the University of Michigan immediately referred our child to Boston Children’s Hospital to be seen and treated by Dr. Ming Hui Chen and Dr. Christopher Walsh, the top researchers behind PVNH in our entire country who run the BrDG (Brain Development and Genetics) and C-BrDG (Cardiovascular for Brain Development and Genetics) clinics for Boston Children’s Hospital. Our child is now being treated and monitored by the top physicians in our nation because, again, PVNH is in fact a “big deal”. Also, on top of our experience with Dr. Christopher J. Allen, he also failed to find another cortical malformation of our child’s brain via his MRI called Polymicrogyria; the Neurologist we had seen at Boston Children’s Hospital was extremely surprised this was overlooked, as the areas of heterotopia on our child’s brain are also in the areas of polymicrogyria. Oh, and as far as our child “faking” his seizures and “doing it for attention”, our son’s seizures did eventually increase to daily episodes of multiple seizures per day (which he is now on medication for), and is now showing on EEGs as being extremely high risk for focal and multifocal seizures; he has also experienced episodes of memory loss when he sleeps that have contributed to regressions where he has even had to have Occupational Therapy to assist with teaching him how to relearn to self-feed. Needless to say, I would never in my life recommend this physician, and would rather recommend that he himself do further research and educate himself more on conditions that he does not fully understand before telling any family that their child’s diagnosis is “not a big deal” (and if you’re reading this Allen, feel free to google Dr. Chen and Dr. Walsh’s published researched in the National Institute of Health titled “FLNA-related Periventricular Nodular Heterotopia”).

Could not explain a MRI of brain. He had to call radiologist to find out the degree of chiari. Local radiologist are not going by today's standards for chiari so they are completely missing it (radiologist said it wasn't much not to worry). Started asking questions about chiari and compared list of child's symptoms to chiari and said child's symptoms did not match chiari (which every one of her symptoms did! He got very defensive when I started asking questions. Ended up driving to a chiari specialist and child needed to have decompression surgery (herniation of 7mm and almost no CSF flow) tethered cord surgery (another condition covenant missed!). All in all my child is going better after traveling to a chiari specialist. He knows nothing about chiari and related diseases so I'm not even going to use him as our neurologist for future care for our child.

Too much in a hurry to change everything before he even knows the patients.