A CAT scan, otherwise known as a computer tomography, or CT scan, is used by doctors in order to screen for certain diseases. Although CT scans can be used to scan any part of the body, doctors will focus on doing a head scan if their patient is complaining of memory loss or memory lapses. Such symptoms raise concern for the probability of diseases like Huntington’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, or Parkinson’s Disease.
By completing a CT scan of one’s brain, they can determine if one is experiencing memory loss as a symptom of one of these mental diseases, or if they are suffering from another mental disorder, a blood clot, a stroke, an aneurysm, or a brain tumor. CT scans can provide doctors with a lot of insight as to what is going on inside one’s brain, something that can’t be done with a simple examination in your doctor’s office.
CAT scans are typically performed if a doctor suspects an underlying reason for one’s memory loss. As memory loss and memory lapses can be the result of a number of issues, sometimes a doctor needs to get the full picture as to what is going on with a patient before diagnosing them with a disease as debilitating as Alzheimer’s disease, or before offering any form of treatment without fully understanding the disabilities one is experiencing.
Depending on the detail that a doctor is looking for in any kind of scan, they may determine that a CT scan would be more helpful in diagnosing their memory issues than an MRI. Sometimes, doctors may prefer to do both a CT scan and an MRI in order to catch something that the other might not reveal in scan results. This way, a doctor can diagnose the patient’s issue more accurately and provide a more focused treatment depending on the disorder or issue found from the scans.