[The place of scintigraphy in the lung cancer diagnosis]

The incidence of lung cancer has had a significant increase during the last years, belonging today, along with the cardiovascular disease and accidents, to the top three places in mortality. The current article presents the importance of the pulmonary perfusion scintigraphy during the algorithm of the bronchopulmonary cancer's diagnosis, clinical staging and resection, in correlation with other imagistic (Rx, CT, NMR) and non-imagistic methods (bronchoscopy, functional respiratory tests). Based on the cases of the Nuclear Medicine Dept. of the County's Clinical Hospital of Cluj-Napoca, the study was made on 130 cases, investigated between 01.01.1998 and 15.06.1999. The initial diagnosis of the patients which needed pulmonary perfusion scintigraphy was diverse, most of them being period being suspected of lung embolism, followed by those suspected of bronchopulmonary cancer. We've taken into account a number of 34 cases of lung cancer. Out of them, 20 patients (58.82%) presented minor peripheral perfusion deficit and had surgical procedures, and 14 patients (41.17%) presented centrohilar carcinoma with major perfusion deficit. The pulmonary perfusion scintigraphy is an objective, non-invasive, rapid and efficient method of estimating the pulmonary blood flow.