Neurologists pinpoint signs and symptoms of CTE disease

ABC NEWS (Australia)

For decades the only way to positively diagnose the degenerative brain disease CTE has been after a patient has died. Now researchers are using 3-d imaging with MRI and PET scans to look inside the brain of patients who are still alive. The method looks for specific signs and clues on tests and imaging scans that could form a probable diagnosis of CTE.

Transcript

00:00 Well, I think it's important to recognise that it is a type of dementia, it slowly progresses,

00:06 so we can look for those patterns of decline in patients, we can follow them with specific

00:10 cognitive testing and certain imaging to validate that they appear to have a pattern of dementia,

00:15 they have a likelihood of CTE.

00:17 And so we need to move forward positively in Australia to fund this type of research,

00:21 but also get patients and their families to the appropriate care, who look for all the

00:25 world to have CTE and are at a high risk of it.

00:28 So at Macquarie University we run various support programs for patients, those types

00:32 of approaches are expanding around the country and indeed internationally with my colleagues

00:36 who are now looking at this issue of detecting CTE as best as we can during life.

00:40 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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