Posted by noa on July 18, 2002, at 17:08:19
In reply to SPECT SCAN CONFUSION, posted by Anna Laura on July 16, 2002, at 0:18:20
Sorry you are going through this confusion of MD opinions. I think the science of psychiatry is still so inexact that conflicting medical opinions happen all the time.
Hopefully, someday, new technologies like these scans will help to increase accuracy and precision in diagnosis, but at the moment, even these high tech tools are still only rough approaches--in fact, it is my impression that imaging scans like Spect are not yet considered diagnostic tools, because there is still too little data. For example, there haven't been enough studies or large enough samples to establish that a scan of an individual's brain will yield the kind of information needed for accurate diagnosis (ie, validity), or to establish consensus on how to interpret individual scans (inter-rater reliability).
So far, I think the technology has been helpful for looking at inter-group differences, but has not yet been validated as a tool for recognizing an individual's functional pathology. Part of the reason it will take a while to get enough data from a large enough sample is that the technology is expensive. Many of the studies have very small sample sizes.
BTW--was your scan part of a research study?
poster:noa
thread:112504
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020718/msgs/112813.html