Posted by Daniel Hoffman, M.D. on March 22, 2005, at 19:03:34
In reply to Re: rEEG System Helps Guide Prescribing, posted by Phillipa on March 22, 2005, at 16:02:46
It was with great reluctance that I entered into this thread. Nothing tics me off more than people questioning my integrity. I still see medicine as a very noble profession, so when someone is cynical or skeptical of my life's passions and volunteer commitments to help others with my EXTREMELY busy schedule, I don't take kindly to it. Now I know no one knows me and there is plenty of reason to be skeptical, but suffice it to say that I have been trying very hard to correct erroneous impressions of rEEG that were posted on this thread that were brought to my attention inadvertently. I have no desire nor need to drum up any business from anyone. I've devoted much of my neuropsychiatric career to helping bring my profession out of the dark ages. I've published, am a consulting editor of 3 national peer reviewed journals, etc and my goal was to offer some education on this topic. To summarize the original points I was trying to make initially:
Brain-mapping or any other QEEG analysis differs from rEEG in one extremely key easy to understand way. ONLY rEEG uses an outcome database – patients who were treated successfully and unsuccessfully. That is why it is more directly relevant to medication selection. Other approaches only had a comparison to a normative database – that is people without symptoms These identify differences from the norm but then had to make suppositions about what might correct the norms or perhaps what diagnosis was appropriate. Because of the patient database, rEEG goes the next step and asks, in fact what medications work most of the time for people having those aberrations. Without this data everything is necessarily a guess. So the lesson here is you can learn more from patients who have been treated than you can from untreated and asymptomatic individuals.
The scientists who spent 18 years developing this database on their own time are some of the top people I've ever met, and stand up well to scutiny with professors and chairmans at Stanford, Harvard, etc - where in fact research pilots are starting. There are some publications on this and some submitted. A field has to start somewhere. This is not a panacea, but offers some people an evidence based approach to their neurophysiology with possible alternatives and objectivity beyond nomenclature.
Eric Braverman uses QEEG, but not rEEG - yet. He has been exposed to it and is impressed with it (as far as I can tell).
I hope my input has clarified some things. I will now bow out to the sidelines, least I be further accused of trying to drum up business. While it is hard for me to say no to someone asking, I will make it a rule not to accept any inquiries from anyone on this site to support my independent objective uncomprimising position.
poster:Daniel Hoffman, M.D.
thread:455823
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050322/msgs/474239.html