Iranian-Canadian doctor from Montreal leveling the racial playing field when it comes to diagnosing several illnesses
Posted October 15, 2025 5:36 pm.
Last Updated October 15, 2025 5:41 pm.
Dr. Khashayar Rafatzand is an Iranian-Canadian doctor in Montreal, who is changing the narrative when it comes to diagnosing critical health issues such as prostate cancer with something as simple as a blood test. He is leveling the playing field when it comes to easier access to healthcare for those from diverse communities.
Dr. Rafatzandan is an associate professor of Radiology and the owner and medical director of ISMI Montreal; a private clinic in Kirkland, on Montreal’s West Island.
“Stockholm 3 has managed, or at least has the potential to reduce the racial disparities in prostate cancer, morbidity and mortality, along with people who are at highest risk, which are African Americans and men of Haitian descent,” said Dr. Rafatzand. “We look for imprints of prostate cancer in the blood. And it’s called the Stockholm 3. And so far it’s the best screening tests we have for prostate cancer.”
This specialty test is only done in one laboratory in the world, at least commercially and that is in Sweden.
Dr Rafatzand continues, “So before this test, most of the workup for prostate cancer has been based on access to a urologist and the biopsy and especially MRI as a non-invasive method. And of course, access to MRI is difficult. And for sure, there are discrepancies between different social tiers. Prostate cancer specifically has higher prevalence and mortality and morbidity in African American men and some other races. So the blood tests can be done anywhere. MRI machines are hard to find. So if this blood test is available, then anyone anywhere with the smallest access to a small clinic can be screened for prostate cancer. I think it levels the playing field for prostate cancer screening.”
They take the bloods at the clinic and send them to Sweden.
“My hope is that every clinic that takes blood will be able to do that and send it over there,” said Dr. Rafatzand.
Meghann Petrilli visited Dr. Rafatzand, where she discovered she would be battling one of the toughest battles of her life, stage one ovarian cancer.
“When I went to see in the public system for an appointment, the wait times were very long, so I decided to seek out a private clinic, within a few days I had an appointment with Dr. Khashy,” said Petrilli.
“As soon as you walked in, it’s super warm and welcoming and it almost feels like you’re in a hotel,” added Petrilli. “Even like the robes that you have to change into for the ultrasound with the technician, it’s like an actual robe It’s not like that hospital gown and just, yeah, it was just a really nice welcoming experience.”
She didn’t know what she was walking into when she visited Dr. Rafatzand’s clinic. “I wasn’t nervous or anything on the table,” said Petrilli. “The technician was super, super nice and reassuring. After the technician was done with the exam, she told me, oh, the doctor will be in to see you momentarily. And up until that very moment, I didn’t know that. I thought that my results were being sent back to the doctor and I’d get a call in a few weeks. So I was really happy to know that I’d get some feedback right away on my exam.”
“He came in and sat with me and gave me some difficult news,” added Petrilli. “Once I snapped out of that, I felt so supported and I needed to call my wife immediately. And he sat there, held my hand while I called her. They spoke to her on the speakerphone. She got in the car, she came here. He sat with me while I waited for her. He needed me to get an MRI. He called the clinic that does private MRIs and he got me an appointment for the next day.”
Petrilli says there’s no comparing the service she received versus the service she would have received in a hospital. “It’s nothing against the actual doctors in hospitals,” said Petrilli. “It’s really just the system. And yeah, so I’m so grateful that I came here.”
“Longevity medicine can really range from a minimalist approach with a holistic color to really advanced testing and a very deep look into the function and anatomy of the human body,” explained Dr. Rafatzand. “The type of longevity tests, at least, that we offer are mostly MRI based. We do have an advanced epigenetic test. Again, the lab is in Switzerland. Stockholm 3, the lab is in Sweden. So we are more on the cutting edge testing for longevity. And then, of course, that leads to exercise and physiotherapy and naturopathy and proper nutrition, which are the usual components of longevity medicine.
“Dementia is something that we will get if we live long enough,” added Dr. Rafatzand. “And up to a few years ago, we really didn’t have much to combat this disease. Now we have FDA approved medication that will slow down the progression and sometimes stop the progression of the disease. Therefore, it’s important to predict the presence of disease or the probability of disease as soon as possible. And we recently acquired an advanced software that uses simple bread and butter MRI sequences to be able to quantify the age of our brain. And in some instances, it can predict the tendencies of people to have dementia, which would lead to early diagnosis and therefore early prevention, or at least slowing of the disease. I got into this space because I wanted to get an evaluation for suspected dementia in a loved one and there was no access to it. So I had to do the thing I know best, look into advanced MRI technology.”
“You don’t have to wait months and sometimes years to get evaluated clinically,” added Dr. Rafatzand. “This can be a good tool to cut that time short. There are some articles that mainly in the European population have studied and between three to five years, the measurements of the volumes of the brain, which are not apparent to the naked eye, even to the naked eye of a trained radiologist, even a neuro radiologist, would be able to predict that these people are prone to developing cognitive dysfunction in the future. So three to five years. So there will be a genetic predisposition based on genetic testing. And this is where most of these patients are interested to kind of monitor the health of their brain or the age of their brain, because in those cases, just to put it simply, the brain will age faster.
“So if I’m 45 and my brain age is 55, then there’s cause for concern, at least cause for monitoring, and if possible, just early treatment. Probably the majority of patients come with a request for imaging with a requisition for either an ultrasound or a pain procedure. If they don’t, and this happens fairly often because access to primary care can be difficult, especially if you need rapid access. So with those patients, I’m doing the job of a clinical radiologist, not just a diagnostic radiologist. And then I steer them through the right pathways. If imaging is a proper test for what they need, then I’ll help them navigate their health journey.”
