Kalyan Katakam, MD

This doctor dismissed every one of my concerns before his Autism diagnosis. He saw my son since birth and got to know us pretty well as I had a lot of concerns about his development. When I told him that my son would not respond to his name and that he had poor eye contact, he just dismissed it as selective hearing. At around 15 months my son started to head bang, was lining up his toys, and had limited speech, which are all major red flags for Autism, and this doctor still dismissed my concerns and said it was too early to diagnose or treat. It wasn’t until after his 2nd birthday when he finally developed his speech, that I definitely knew something was wrong and researched his symptoms and found out that he had echolalia. When I told Dr. Katakam this, he finally gave us the referral to a developmental ped in South Bend which took us an entire year to get into,not only because there’s a long waitlist, but because this office dropped the ball in sending the paper work over, and I… didn’t know about until 6 months later!!! At our first appointment with the developmental ped, she told us that there was no doubt he would be diagnosed with Autism. The irony of it all, is that this doctor shares office space with a outpatient pediatric therapy practice as I’m sure a lot of his patients are referred there, and not once did he suggest early intervention services or an evaluation that I believed would’ve greatly benefited my son. By the time he was diagnosed, it was too late and he aged out of the states program which I knew nothing about at the time. It’s also sad when a Nurse Practitioner in an ER could tell there was something off about him right away and not his own doctor who knew him since birth.