Requesting review of MRI

[Shashi]

How do you request a review of your MRI from Mayo Clinic or Cleveland Clinic? On another thread I posted, someone said that they would do a review. How do you go about requesting that? Do you have to make an appointment first?

Thanks,

Lisa

[lemstar]

Call them and ask.....easy enough....good idea?

[kingrex]

There are many excellent, board-certified neuroradiologists who don't read MRIs at the Mayo Clinic or Cleveland Clinic. What specifically is it that you feel is missing from the interpretations you've gotten so far, and where were they read? Were they read by a board-certified neuroradiologist?


rex

[0485c10]

from what i have read of mayo clinic, they would not just "review" one thing of any patient--mayo does the whole patient not in a vacuum--they will review a diagnosis--not an mri. they have reveiws lasting for a few days/hours with specialist from multiple fields reviewing a single case.. i know of one woman who was uncertain of her diagnosis, got her doc to write a request for a second opinion from mayo.

her insurance company agreed to pay for it with out paying for any tests be done at mayo, mayo could recommend a test be done--all test had to be done locally. She and her dad drove up to mayo for a 1 day audit of her records by a mayo neuro. I'm not certain how many hours she meet with him? he reviewed her records, told her there was a 98% chance she had ms and recommended a neuropsyche test be done as a base line.

Nothing in medicine is 100% certain, there is always some uncertainty in medicine--so you will get the greatest probability of what it is.

besides, the mri never diagnosis--the mri only supports or does not support clinical observation.

[kingrex]

from what i have read of mayo clinic, they would not just "review" one thing of any patient--mayo does the whole patient not in a vacuum--they will review a diagnosis--not an mri. they have reveiws lasting for a few days/hours with specialist from multiple fields reviewing a single case.. i know of one woman who was uncertain of her diagnosis, got her doc to write a request for a second opinion from mayo.

her insurance company agreed to pay for it with out paying for any tests be done at mayo, mayo could recommend a test be done--all tests had to be done locally. She and her dad drove up to mayo for a 1 day audit of her records by a mayo neuro. I'm not certain how many hours she meet with him? he reviewed her records, told her there was a 98% chance she had ms and recommended a neuropsyche test be done as a base line.

Nothing in medicine is 100% certain, there is always some uncertainty in medicine--so you will get the greatest probability of what it is.

besides, the mri never diagnosis--the mri only supports or does not support clinical observation.

Well, not exactly

You can get any radiologist to do an "over-read" for a fee, whether they read for the Mayo Clinic or the Free Clinic. You're simply getting a second opinion of the images. Radiologists do the reading and they don't examine patients anyway.

As for the inability of MRI to make a diagnosis - this is a gray area. As a rule, MS plaques are not difficult to see or identify. The differential diagnoses are done as a matter of protocol, but most of the time MS plaques are correctly identified as MS plaques on MRI...but they will be generically referred to as "areas of demyelination." All of this is in regard to MS. As I wrote earlier, MRI can identify a brain tumor reliably and can even predict the type, based upon imaging characteristics and/or contrast enhancement pattern. The same is true of stroke, abscess and other infections. PML comes to mind.


rex

[0485c10]

When the first case of tysabri pml happened an MRI failed to identify it,because it wasn't expected. nor does a spinal tap conclusively identify tysabri induced pml.

but its like you said its a grey area. but technologist ultimately know the most

[kingrex]

When the first case of tysabri pml happened an MRI failed to identify it,because it wasn't expected. nor does a spinal tap conclusively identify tysabri induced pml.

but its like you said its a grey area. but technologist ultimately know the most

PML has been seen and diagnosed by MRI many times over the years, long before Tysabri. Patients with AIDS frequently developed PML, as their immune systems became severely compromised. I speak in the past tense about this because I think the modern drugs are keeping many HIV+ patients' immune systems strong enough to prevent PML.


rex