Panel Disdussion

3rd International Congress of of Nuclear Medicine & & 15th 15th Iranian Annual Annual Congress of
Congress of Nuclear Medicine
Shahid Beheshti Shahid Beheshti University University of Medical of Medical Sciences Sciences 19-21 19-21 May May 2011
Imaging of Dopamine-Terminal Function in Central Movement
Disorders Using Emission Tomography
F. Sedaghat (Greece)
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki
Educational Objectives:
The importance of dopamine transporters and receptors imaging
using SPECT in early differential diagnosis of parkinsonism,
Its potential as a screening tool for subjects at risk of developing
PD,
Issues around the assessment of disease progression,
The importance of semiquantitative analysis of the images.
Summery:
Patients suffering from central movement disorders share the
common clinical symptom of parkinsonism. Differentiating between
these pathologies and essential tremor (ET) is a difficult and
important task as they demand different therapeutic strategies and
have different prognoses. Studies suggest that almost one third of
patients are incorrectly diagnosed with PD by primary care physicians
initially. Even among movement disorder specialists, the rate of
misdiagnosis of PD is reported to be 10% to 12%. The development
of PET and SPECT imaging in movement disorders has been
accelerated by the early descriptions of the loss of dopamine neurons
of substantia nigra. The application of emission tomography using
dopamine-transporters and receptors radiopharmaceuticals in
investigation of movement disorders will be discussed.
Keywords: SPECT, DaT Scan, Parkinsonism, IBZM, Parkinson,
Dopamine receptors, Presynaptic dopamine transporters
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