Head of the Hyperbaric Unit at Assaf Harofeh Medical Center. Using SPECT scan to prove anything may be worthless.
From here:
http://neurobollocks.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/utterly-shameless-diagnostic-brain-imaging-neurobollocks/
Why use SPECT? The spatial resolution of the images is crap, and no-one uses it for clinical or research work that much anymore.
And the research here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3829860/#
Jinglu Ai, Editor
Abstract
Background
Traumatic
brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of death and disability in the
US. Approximately 70-90% of the TBI cases are classified as mild, and up
to 25% of them will not recover and suffer chronic neurocognitive
impairments. The main pathology in these cases involves diffuse brain
injuries, which are hard to detect by anatomical imaging yet noticeable
in metabolic imaging. The current study tested the effectiveness of
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) in improving brain function and quality
of life in mTBI patients suffering chronic neurocognitive impairments.
Methods and Findings
The
trial population included 56 mTBI patients 1–5 years after injury with
prolonged post-concussion syndrome (PCS). The HBOT effect was evaluated
by means of prospective, randomized, crossover controlled trial: the
patients were randomly assigned to treated or crossover groups. Patients
in the treated group were evaluated at baseline and following 40 HBOT
sessions; patients in the crossover group were evaluated three times: at
baseline, following a 2-month control period of no treatment, and
following subsequent 2-months of 40 HBOT sessions. The HBOT protocol
included 40 treatment sessions (5 days/week), 60 minutes each, with 100%
oxygen at 1.5 ATA. “Mindstreams” was used for cognitive evaluations,
quality of life (QOL) was evaluated by the EQ-5D, and changes in brain
activity were assessed by SPECT imaging. Significant improvements were
demonstrated in cognitive function and QOL in both groups following HBOT
but no significant improvement was observed following the control
period. SPECT imaging revealed elevated brain activity in good agreement
with the cognitive improvements.
Conclusions
HBOT
can induce neuroplasticity leading to repair of chronically impaired
brain functions and improved quality of life in mTBI patients with
prolonged PCS at late chronic stage.
Rather than putting comments here this person sent me an email directly.
ReplyDeleteZe'ev Cohen
2:27 AM (9 hours ago)
to me
Hi,
I personally know Dr.Efrati to be a serious researcher. He does use SPECT to assess potential usefulness of HBOT for patients, by comparing functional\metabolizing areas of the brain (seen in SPECT) to MRI scans of brain damaged areas. I'm a physical therapist, not an imaging expert, but using it this way, not to diagnose neurological conditions but to assess activity level of gross brain areas, seems like a reasonable way of doing screening (and research, by comparing an individual pre and post-treatment SPECTs). If you have a (clear) question regarding the use of SPECT in his studies or center I can forward it to him.