My 80 yo mother has been having memory issues and tremors. I took her to a neurologist for a full work up. EEG normal. MRI normal with two notes pasted below (TIA damage from years ago and volume question). A litany of blood work also came back all normal. Is a PET scan really necessary or might we be better off experimenting with diet (increase omegas, etc) and possibly look at RX interactions since all the aforementioned tests have been normal? The neurologist suggested it was maybe early dementia or Alz but that was before everything came back normal. I am just confused about whether or not to do PET. ** The hippocampal volumes are within the normal range when compared to age-matched controls for this patient. The total hippocampal volume measures 5.75 mL which is at the 62nd percentile when compared to age-matched controls. **There is mild to moderate chronic small vessel ischemia and mild generalized volume loss. Thanks!
If Mom is done, she’s done. She’s old enough to know what she wants and she wants to be left alone. Explain that to her PCP and ask to explore other avenues for her.
Previously, (several years ago) her rheumatologist and her primary were non-communicative which led to many RX problems with very bad interactions. I bring that up only because it caused so many problems that seemed more dire than they actually were, but were really just about poor management of meds (and communication) among the providers.
She is very fortunate and has amazing insurance that will pay for anything. But she's just tired of the tests. I can definitely talk her into it, I just wondered about the value of it with everything else coming back negative plus I didn't want to waste time not examining the alternative remedies.
Thank you for your feedback and perspectives.
" to look for amyloid plaques" which are markers for Alzheimers. They don't show up on CTs or MRIs.
She's already got some vascular changes going on, which can affect cognition.
Have you considered neuropsychological testing, which will show if this is "only" memory loss or loss of reasoning abilities as well? And may give you a sense of how able she is to manage day to day on her own?