I Recently Had A Brain MRI With Contrast And These

Brief Answer:
Likely a benign process

Detailed Answer:
Good afternoon and thank you for your question. You've not presented some other information that I would find helpful to answer your question. Why did you get a brain MRI with gadolinium contrast in the first place. In other words what symptoms were you suffering from that took you the doctor for which this study was ordered? Was it a neurologist who ordered the study or some other type of doctor?

Are you diabetic? Hypertensive (suffering from high blood pressure- even if under good control), have high cholesterol or high lipids, a smoker or FORMER smoker.

Just to be direct about TRANSLATING the findings for you in NON-MEDICAL English....here's what it says.

There are several isolated small areas (FOCI) in the right frontal area of the brain (right sided subcortical frontal cerebral white matter) which cannot be categorized as being part of any obvious disease process (nonspecific) but which most likely were caused by scarring of the brain from some type of injury.

Gliosis is a fancy term for "scar in the brain"....just as your skin develops a scar when you cut yourself the brain can develop scars (GLIOTIC REACTIONS) when something injuries the brain tissue. Things that can cause brain injury are infections, penetrating wounds from projectiles, bullets, etc., inflammatory reactions that can be cause by autoimmune diseases, sudden shifts or changes in the concentrations of electrolytes in the bloodstream, strokes, bleeds, concussions.

So as you can see your HISTORY is very important in order to determine whether or not you may have been exposed any of those sorts of events.

There is no treatment for gliosis because it would be like asking, "how do I treat the scar on my arm from when I cut myself?" You don't treat the scar in general....and especially in the brain since the only way that could happen would be to go inside your brain and EXCISE them with a scalpel and some retractors which is likely to do more than good because the surgeon would have to dig into good brain tissue and tunnel below the level of the cortex to get to the subcortex and that would then, result in more gliosis up on top where the surgeon cuts just to get to the areas where there is scarring from an unknown entity.....you'd probably find that unacceptable since it would then, takes you weeks to recover, there'd be the risk of postoperative complications and then, there's the anesthesia......

You get the picture?

The better option would be to do a careful history to see if you've actually been exposed or have any antecedents events from when you were a child to the present that fall into the categories I mentioned since the other thing that cannot be stated from the MRI is HOW OLD these changes are....I would venture to say that unless you suffered any of the traumas or inflammatory events I mentioned above that whatever caused these FOCI (isolated small areas) is long gone. The scarring process cannot really even be seen on an MRI until at least months to years after the insult to the brain....so we know these didn't occur in the past few months.

If you'd like me to look at the entire report by scanning it, uploading it, and attaching it to this consult query I'd be happy to review the ENTIRE report to see if the radiologist gives me any more clues as to what's going on as to why this study was done, the protocols they used to scan you, etc.

If I've provided useful or helpful information could you do me a HUGE favor by CLOSING THE QUERY and taking a moment to provide a few kind words of feedback, perhaps even stamping the consult with a 5 STAR rating if you feel so inclined?

Do not forget to contact me in the future at: www.bit.ly/drdariushsaghafi for additional questions, comments, or concerns having to do with this topic or others.

This query has utilized a total of 29 minutes of professional time in research, review, and synthesis for the purpose of formulating a return statement.

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