Bone scintigraphy in staging of bladder carcinoma

The role of bone scintigraphy in the staging of bladder carcinoma before attempted radical therapy was evaluated from a personal series of 71 consecutive cases. The results from this were correlated to previous reports--accumulated data from a total of 458 staging bone scans were thus obtained. In this accumulated material metastases were diagnosed in 4.6 per cent--in 2.8 per cent true positive and in 1.7 per cent false positive findings. The effect of the bone scanning results on therapy was minimal: cystectomy was performed in spite of the diagnosis of metastases in 16 out of 21 patients. In only 4 patients (0.9%) surgery was avoided because of scintigraphy results. Scintigraphy thus has no place in the routine preoperative staging of bladder carcinoma.