The usefulness of bone-marrow scintigraphy in the detection of bone metastasis from prostatic cancer

We used a combination of bone and bone-marrow scintigraphy to study 25 patients with prostatic cancer. Of the 18 cases whose 99mTc-methylene diphosphonate (MDP) bone scans showed hot spots in the lower lumbar region of the spine and/or the pelvic bone, 8 had normal bone-marrow scintigrams. These 8 patients were subsequently shown to have senile, degenerative changes of the spine. On the other hand, in 9 of the 10 patients whose bone-marrow scintigrams showed accumulation defects, follow-up study and characteristic X-ray findings confirmed the presence of metastases. In all 6 cases with extensive bone metastases shown by 99mTc-MDP bone scintigraphy, 99mTc-sulphur-colloid bone-marrow scintigraphy showed multiple accumulation defects. In conclusion, bone-marrow scintigraphy was found to be useful in distinguishing metastatic lesions from benign degenerative changes in the cases with suspected bone involvement, as well as in evaluating equivocal lesions in the pelvis.