ADHD Treatments and Diagnosis...Go the Limit to be Sure

Good article about the diagnosis process....we have all the medical equipment to perform such tests, but many times insurance companies will not pay, or sometimes is it easier to just prescribe a pill....the story shows some surprising results and offers additional information, such as determining an IQ, finding other issues at hand...and sometimes the wrong treatment process was in place once tests had been conducted...and some of those could be detrimental for life...BD

So why isn't it used more often? A number of doctors said reading the MRIs and EEGs is complicated, and not every neurologist is properly trained to read them. The tests are also expensive, and are often not covered by insurance. Dr. Fernando Miranda, a neurologist at the Bright Minds Institute in San Francisco, says diagnosing children with behavioral disorders like ADHD and autism without looking at their brains is like trying to diagnose heart problems without actually looking at the heart. Click here to read a story about Miranda's autism research.
Many scam artists have also claimed they could read these brain imaging tests when they could not, bilking people out of thousands of dollars.
But Miranda, as well as many patients, believe they are on the cutting edge of a new frontier in diagnosing and treating children's cognitive problems. Jan Jensen, a nurse whose husband is a surgeon, worried about the attention problems she saw in her three children. But she wasn't happy that her family practitioner suggested prescribing Ritalin without doing any tests.
But the other children's data yielded some surprises. Zach's tests showed signs of ADHD but also structural problems in his brain.