The owner of Guelph Medical Imaging says his clinic is the first in Ontario to offer a newly-approved brain scan that can indicate with certainty if a patient has Parkinson’s disease.
The DaTscan, as it is called, can give doctors a definitive answer of whether or not a patient has Parkinson’s disease or a nerve disorder like essential tremor, said Probhash Mondal, chief executive officer and managing director of Guelph Medical Imaging.
“It allows the patient to be managed properly, because Parkinson’s is degenerative and there is no cure yet, but for essential tremor, it’s not the end of the world. They find a way to adapt to them,” said Mondal.
On Friday, the Guelph Medical Imaging location on Dawson Road welcomed Sophie, its first patient to receive a DaTscan. Sophie was interviewed prior to her scan and GuelphToday has agreed to use only her first name to protect her privacy.
Sophie said after three years and many diagnoses, she is excited to have a definitive answer about her condition.
“I have done a lot of paramedical treatments, like osteopath, acupuncture, acupressure, chiropractic — so I think this will definitely help in terms of what direction I take in terms of treatment,” said Sophie.
At times Sophie has had to wait up to six months for an MRI scan, which she said is one of the reasons her diagnosis has taken so long.
“And even then you have to argue with the professionals that you need it,” she said.
A DaTscan can be booked within a week after a referral to a neurologist, mostly because the radiopharmaceutical it uses must be flown from Europe on an as-needed basis. It must be used right away and cannot be stored on site.
For the procedure, patients are injected with a radiopharmaceutical containing a radioactive isotope, which allows the scanner to determine if certain neurons in the brain are functional, said Dr. Rick Dubeau, who was overseeing the initial scan at Guelph Medical Imaging on Friday.
CT and MRI scans are unable to see what the DaTscan can see, said Dubeau.
“This is actually able to image degeneration of neurons in the brain, which is far beyond the anatomic pictures that CT Scans and MRI scans can get,” said Dubeau.
The scan will show these particular neurons that are related to movement disorders — are there or not.
Dubeau said the DaTscan will give confidence to a doctor that their patient’s treatment is being managed properly.
Often people with a nerve disorder like essential tremor are misdiagnosed as having Parkinson’s disease, said Dubeau, and the effects of being prescribed the wrong medication can be harmful.
“It takes months to figure that out and the patients develop bad side effects,” said Dubeau.
There is a cost to the procedure, said Mondal, but it is lower than the approximately $10,000 price tag to have it done in the United States.
No other clinic in Ontario is currently offering the scan, said Mondal, with the closest clinic to offer it being in Montreal.
Currently, the procedure is not covered under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP), but Mondal and other imaging clinics in the province are lobbying the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to cover the cost for patients.
“As we get results here, we will reach out to the government to make it accessible,” said Mondal. “Imagine the province’s wasted resources — the doctors, the scans that aren’t giving the definitive answers. We can save that money by investing in one scan for that patient,” he said.
