DaTscan can dx PD
 

DaTscans have been being used in Europe since 2000 to dx PD. The scan measures dopamine levels in four quadrants of the brain. If the dopamine is low, then you have either PD or a Parkinson's plus syndrome. It can't distinguish between PD, PSP, and MSA, but it can say that your condition is either dopamine related or ET. The question that this begs is why did it take until 2009 for the FDA to accept the new drug application? How behind is this country in neuroscience?

Its most certainly not about being behind with technology,its about economics and new advances are developed under such stirct regulation to protect us,that they become unavailable when released into the health system,because they are priced to return research revenue costs and make profit from illness

The DaTSCAN a new generation brain scan (also called I123-FP-CIT), first launched in Europe in 2002, has been shown to diagnose PD with greater accuracy (up to 98 percent accuracy) compared with conventional scanning methods in patients exhibiting no PD symptoms other than tremors. According to studies DaTSCAN is particularly effective at distinguishing between Parkinson's disease and a less severe type of neurological disorder called essential tremor. Until the advent of DaTSCAN, the diagnosis of Parkinson's disease was primarily based upon clinical assessment...which has only an eighty percent accuracy rate." Although currently not widely available, DaTSCAN is an important advancement in the area of PD diagnosis.
98% accuracy by DAT as opposed to 80% accuracy of clinical work up and drug response ,were talking about millions of people,

We have the dubious distinction...
 

Our health care system is based on the premise that health care is a commodity like VCRs or computers and that it should be distributed according to the ability to pay in the same way that consumer goods are. That's not what health care should be. Health care is a need; it's not a commodity, and it should be distributed according to need. If you're very sick, you should have a lot of it. If you're not sick, you shouldn't have a lot of it. But this should be seen as a personal, individual need, not as a commodity to be distributed like other marketplace commodities. That is a fundamental mistake in the way this country, and only this country, looks at health care. And that market ideology is what has made the health care system so dreadful, so bad at what it does.

Marcia Angell, M.D. and former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and my new unsung super hero! This is from an interview with PBS.

Not only are we struggling with an incurable disease, we are players in the middle of a money making system that benefits from keeping us unwell. We are merely grist for the mill.

-Laura

My dx was confirmed by DaTSCAN in August, but I had no desire to see the numbers/report. Cost £ 2500