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Gallium-67 citrate scan in extrapulmonary tuberculosis
1Department of Nuclear Medicine, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, Taiwan. wylin@vghtc.vghtc.gov.tw
Aim:
Whole-body gallium scan was performed to evaluate the usefulness of gallium scan for detecting extrapulmonary tuberculosis (TB) lesions.
Methods:
Thirty-seven patients with extrapulmonary TB were included in this study. Four patients were found to have two lesions. Totally, 41 lesions were identified, including 19 TB arthritis, 8 spinal TB, 5 TB meningitis, 3 TB lymphadenopathy, 2 TB pericarditis, 1 TB peritonitis, 1 intestinal TB, 1 skin TB and 1 renal TB.
Results:
Of the 41 extrapulmonary TB lesions, gallium scan detected 32 lesions with a sensitivity of 78%. All the patients with TB meningitis showed negative gallium scan. When the five cases of TB meningitis were excluded, the detection sensitivity of gallium scan increased to 88.9% (32/36).
Conclusion:
Our data revealed that gallium scan is a convenient and useful method for evaluating extrapulmonary TB lesions other than TB meningitis. We suggest that gallium scan be included in the clinical routine for patients with suspected extrapulmonary TB.