WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., May 25 /PRNewswire/ — Hanley Center, one
of the country’s leading nonprofit addiction treatment centers,
today announced plans to use SPECT (single photon emission
computed tomography) scans to capture brain images of patients
with alcohol and drug addiction. These pictures help identify blood
flow to the areas of the brain involved in addictive behaviors,
which Hanley Center’s medical staff can use to design more
effective patient treatment programs.
“We are introducing the next frontier of addiction treatment in
scanning the brain, which is the target organ for this disease,”
said Dr. Barbara Krantz, chief
executive officer and medical director of research at Hanley
Center. “By capturing precise blood-flow information and using our
baseline knowledge of a healthy brain structure, we can recommend
more effective treatments, identify other brain-based disorders
that affect addiction and can scientifically document and
demonstrate what works and what doesn’t in addiction
treatment.”
While advances in science have shown that addiction is indeed a
disease, medical technology commonly used to diagnose other illness
has not yet been integrated into standard addiction treatment
programs.
“What we’re doing here is really diagnosing the physiological
problem that contributes to addiction, showing patients with clear
pictures how addictive drugs change the brain, and then we can
create a plan to attack the problems directly,” said Dr. Daniel Amen, who wrote the best-selling
book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Body and is chief
executive officer and medical director of Amen Clinics. “This
technology that we have used for years to diagnose many other
illnesses will show that addiction is not a characte
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