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At 08:14 AM 8/5/96 -0400, you wrote: >Regarding Sherri's e-mail in which she mentioned the expense of PET Scans >to assure an accurage PD diagnosis... > >* How expensive ARE the PET scans, and will insurance typically pay for them? > I have had two PET scans at Johns Hopkins...One about 3 years ago and one about a month and a half ago. Mine were part of a study grant so there was no charge, and I already knew I had PD. PET scan machinery is EXPENSIVE! The starting cost is about $3.5 million each bare bones [no pun intended], and one can add on bells and whistles to bring the cost significantly higher. As of early spring, Chemical Engineering News reported there were 60 PET machines in the US and 250 worldwide. The PET scan is not fast. The ones I had used Carbon 11 in a cocaine analog to map the dopamine receptor reuptake in the brain. Carbon 11 has a half-life of twenty minutes. The actual 'on the table' time is 82 minutes. The cyclotron on site in necessary to generate the ligand(injected tracer). A physicist is needed to operate the cyclotron. A radiologist/nuclear medicine person is needed for the scan and interpretation. Computer capacity and speed are needed. The lead PET scan researcher at Hopkins said to me that a $600-$650 PET scan for PD would be cost efficient, and that was what he was doing. I felt that if I were a paying patient, I would be paying more than that if costs are to be covered. He does not have a specialty in cost accounting. SPECT scans work on approximately the same basis and theory but are far more common and I would guess less expensive. Hopkins is working with a PROBE scanner which is far cheaper and uses far less radiation. It is thus far experimental and no object of beauty--- A Mac PC, an extra circuit board with size D flashlight batteries for power, an old stretcher with part of the mattress cut away and smoothed with duct tape, and wooden blocks to position the part of the body in question. So far it develops just numbers and not the graphic detail in the PET pictures.