I have; and in the followup by the neurology group at my local VA hospital, I asked the neurologist. He brushed me off and said, “I don’t like that test and don’t put much stock in it.” But having had a long career as a healthcare professional in laboratory, I can read a report. I have slight reduction in dopamine attaching cells on the left and relatively normal on right. Reading sbout the test tells me that it is not specific for diagnosis. Most PD patients have reductions in these cells in the brain, but a significant number of PD patients have perfectly normal dopamine uploading; so for me? The test is a dud…just my opinion as a lay person who reads.

The DATscan isn’t really a diagnostic tool. It shows a dopamine loss which tells the doctor he had a patient which some form of parkinsonism. They call it Parkinson disease because it is the most common of the diseases under that umbrella. You still may find you actually have MSA, PSP, Dementia with Lewy bodies. It’s a step toward diagnosis but the final diagnosis requires a good neurologist who knows the differences between between PD and others of similar types. I was diagnosed with PD until 5 days into the big program and the therapist watched me doing exercises and she caught the difference in how I moved, and she was correct - I have MSA. Several MDS have given the same diagnosis. But if the diagnosis is PD chances are it will be the correct diagnosis because it is by far the most common of the parkinsonisms. It does have value however, since the amount of dopamine shows whether or not it’s in the parkinsonism family or some other family of diseases which mimic PD.
Teresa

Hi Bonnie, I had the DAT scan done to rule out essential tremors. It turned out I have PD.

I was having great difficulty getting a nuerologist to believe I wasn’t a hypochondriac or mentally unstable because I was only in my early 40,s the nuerologist said very unlikely but just decided to give me a datscan to Prove me wrong turns out I wasn’t datscan worth doing just to see if dopamine depleting Sharon9

I had the DATscan done 3 weeks ago. After drinking a nuclear bariun and waiting 6 hours for the barium to get wherebit needed to go. The MRI only took about 10/15 minutes. They were trying to determine if i had essential tremmors or Parkinsons. I have parkinsons!

In my opinion, if you been diagnosed already, dont waist hour time or money.