If you use the link I provided in my post, you can fill out the form and they will send you a list of all the facilities in your state with DEXA w/ TBS capabilities. I recommend doing that, and then, from that list, trying to find a facility that can say w/ confidence, “Yes, we have TBS capabilities.”

I question the response you got from the hospital you contacted. There is no “special” piece of equipment that does the TBS part of the scan. All that is required is that the DEXA scanner (Hologic or GE Lunar) has the TBS software installed on the machine. Again, I would attempt to find a facility that regularly does DEXAs w/ TBS, but if the hospital is your only option, you may want to consider going over a few heads. Hospitals have a board of directors. I’m sure the board would hate to learn that their staff can’t figure out how to, literally, click on a link/button on a computer screen to provide you with a TBS.

There is absolutely nothing different in the procedure (meaning what is scanned) between a DEXA and a DEXA w/ TBS. The patient walks in, lies on the scanner, is scanned and that’s it.

I fully understand how incompetent too many of the people working with DEXAs are. It took me approximately 3 months to get my DEXA ancillary data. When I asked for it, the imaging center manager was very condescending to me and insisted that they did not have the information. Finally, I called GE and spoke to the technician who services the machine my DEXA scans were done on and he, literally, walked me through how to print the report, as in, go to this menu, click on this, then on that, and hit print. When I called the imaging center manager back and told her that they needed to talk to the technician, she was still very snippy with me, but shortly thereafter, she called me back and was just as nice and polite as she could be and I finally got the ancillary data.

Finding a facility with DEXA w/ TBS and setting up an appt and getting my trabecular bone scores was also no walk in the park. My endocrinologist didn’t know where I could get a DEXA w/ TBS, I saw another endocrinologist, who said she would help locate a facility with DEXA w/ TBS, but she never did. So I called GE again and the GE Lunar sales rep I spoke to told me about the website to help locate facilities w/ TBS capabilities. The website was awesome. I filled out the form and had a response w/i 15 minutes. Unfortunately, for my state there were only 6 facilities w/ TBS capabilities. 2 are VA related, which means they weren’t really options. 2 were at the largest university in my state and there were no phone numbers listed. The university has no medical school but it does have a huge agriculture dept so my gut feeling is those scanners are for research not for humans. Another was for a children’s hospital and luckily one was for a hospital in a wealthy, rural area of the state. I called the hospital and they had no idea what I was talking about. After several calls, they finally said yes, we have a DEXA scanner w/ TBS capabilities. The hospital is approximately 5 hrs away from my home but I was determined. I asked my endocrinologist to send a referral to the hospital but he never did and he wouldn’t get back to me, so I took the referral from a DEXA w/ TBS which he’d written for a local imaging center (which doesn’t have TBS capabilities) and scratched out the name of the local facility and faxed it to the hospital myself. I called the hospital but they said they could not get it entered into their system because for some reason it wouldn’t let them enter my endocrinologist’s name. After a few more calls, I convinced someone at the hospital to enter it under another doctor’s name (someone already in their system).

Then came the day of my scan. When I walked into the room to have the scan done, the technician said, “I know we told you we could do a DEXA w/ TBS, but we might not be able to give you that information.” Given that I’d driven approximately 5 hrs just to get a trabecular bone score, it’s amazing that I was able to remain calm. I had the scan and it took me a couple of months, and I had to threaten reporting them for HIPAA violations, to finally get my DEXA w/ TBS report.

Hope you are able to find a competent imaging facility. Oh and the reason the hospital couldn’t get my endocrinologist’s name entered into their system is because doctors have to have “rights” to a hospital, which is something my endocrinologist should have told me when I asked for the referral and something everyone who works at a hospital should know. 🙂