Holiday hours

With the exception of Inova hospitals and Inova Emergency Care, all Inova outpatient offices will be closed on Monday, Jan. 19 for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday. 

All Inova-GoHealth Urgent Care locations will be open for in-person visits from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Virtual urgent care services will be available until 8 p.m.

Diagnostics

  • Lumbar Puncture: A lumbar puncture is similar to an epidural given to a woman during childbirth, but instead of administering anesthesia, a small sample of cerebrospinal fluid is collected and sent to the lab for testing. We recommend this be done by a radiologist who will use x-ray imaging to guide the needle placement.
  • Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT): This device takes a picture of your retina, allowing us to measure retinal thickness, which can help your doctor monitor MS.
  • MRI: Generates a picture of your brain and spinal cord, allowing us to see MS lesions. Not all MRI machines are created (or programmed) equally. A high-resolution (3-T) machine with MS sequences can distinguish MS spots from normal spots. A normal (1.5-T) MRI frequently misses MS.