Patient Information
Consumer Centered Healthcare
A consumer driven healthcare model is taking shape in the U.S., driven by powerful economic, cultural and technological forces. Until recently, consumer involvement in choosing drugs and treatments was restricted to buying over-the-counter medications for minor complaints and illnesses. Then, direct-to-consumer marketing of prescription pharmaceuticals opened the door for other types of promoted healthcare products and services, ranging from physician advertisements for cosmetic surgery to e-health businesses that fill prescriptions to the recent advent of full body imaging centers. This new consumer centered push has been significantly accelerated by the now easy access to medical information provided via the explosion of the Internet.
Information & Access is now available
Professional healthcare organizations and the government have done their part to whet the consumer's appetite for information and for access to all types of diagnostic screening exams. Growing numbers of people are following official recommendations for periodic diagnostic screening. Women are encouraged to self-refer for mammography and pap smears. The middle-aged are told to have colonoscopies, sigmoidoscopies, chest x-rays, glucose tests and dental checkups. They are encouraged to screen periodically for everything from high blood pressure to hypercholesterolemia. Indeed, this new medical consumerism has seen out-of-pocket spending on alternative methods of care grow from $13 billion in 1993 to $50 billion today, with no end in sight.
SPECT brain imaging fills the void
Adding even more emphasis to this newly emerging consumer empowerment in the diagnostic brain imaging arena is the fact that the current state-of-the-art in psychiatric care does not engender a general sense of confidence and support with consumers. Due primarily to the lack of objective diagnostic testing tools, psychiatric medicine is often viewed with a great deal of skepticism and scorn. Much of this skepticism and scorn can be traced to the fact that today's medical consumers have been conditioned by other areas of medicine to rely more and more on an ever increasing battery of diagnostic tests to diagnose their medical conditions. And as these advancements in other areas of medicine become increasingly more sophisticated and effective, the void of such diagnostic advancements in the psychiatric practice of medicine grows larger and more noticeable. Consequently, making SPECT diagnostic brain imaging available to an increasingly medically educated, self advocating public, opens the doors to helping a vast amount of people & their loved ones get better, faster.
Brain SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography) imaging is a nuclear medicine study that allows your physician to see how blood is flowing through different areas of your brain. By understanding how blood is perfused throughout the brain your doctor can make a more accurate diagnosis and you can see the areas of your brain that are not functioning properly thereby providing proof that their is good reason to comply with your treatment regiment.
Brain SPECT imaging, utilizing a radiopharmaceutical, provides a "snapshot" of cerebral function. It has been used in the research of neurological and psychiatric disorders for the past decade.
Why do I need a Brain SPECT Scan?
A Brain SPECT scan is an additional tool that supplies objective diagnostic information to your treating clinician that can help provide you with better healthcare. Think of it this way. If you had a broken leg and your doctor wanted to treat you without getting an x-ray how would you feel about the treatment you are receiving? Why should your brain be any different?
I have had other imaging studies including MRI, and/or CT. Why do I need a SPECT scan?
In order to fully evaluate a patient's symptoms, information on both the brain's structure (anatomy) and it's blood supply is often necessary. CT and MRI provide detailed information on the structure of the brain. In many patients, however, the symptoms cannot be completely explained by anatomic changes and further investigation may be necessary since MRI and CT studies may appear normal but symptoms remain. Brain SPECT can often give your physician important information on blood flow that would not be available through these other diagnostic techniques. We believe more accurate diagnosis for some patients is made only after evaluating the blood flow to various areas of the brain and comparing these to normal patterns. The changes that may be detected on brain SPECT studies are diagnostic of some diseases. When doctors combine information on your brain's anatomy and function, they have a more complete understanding of what may be causing your symptoms. Brain SPECT can also be used to evaluate the effectiveness of various treatments.
In studying psychiatric patients with brain SPECT imaging, researchers have found cerebral perfusion patterns that often correlate with different psychiatric conditions. Some of the patterns correlate with the research literature findings of SPECT, some correlate with older observations from the neurosurgical, epilepsy, and neurophysiological literature, and some of the findings are uniquely our own.
Unlike CT, MRI, and EEG, which are rarely useful in the management of patients with psychiatric diagnoses, high resolution brain SPECT imaging performed at Brain Matters, Inc. can be very helpful in the diagnostic process of brain disorders including TBI - Traumatic Brain Injury, Alzheimer's Disease, Seizure Localization, ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Depression, OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety Disorder, and ODD Opositional Defiant Disorder.