Bone scintigrams: their clinical usefulness in patients with breast carcinoma

A comparison of bone scintigrams and roentgenographic skeletal surveys, obtained on 170 patients with breast carcinoma, was made to evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of these techniques in detecting metastatic bone lesions. The bone scans were abnormal in 81 patients, while the roentgenograms were abnormal in only 51. In 34 of the 81 (42%) patients with abnormal bone scans, there was no radiographic evidence of a benign lesion to account for the increased ratiotracer uptake; and the abnormalities noted on the bone scans were proven to be bony metastases on follow-up examinations. In the remaining 47 patients with positive bone scintigrams, both the scans and the roentgenograms were abnormal; however, in 23 patients the bone scan demonstrated significantly more lesions than what the roentgenograms had revealed. This study confirms that bone scan is superior to roentgen surveys in detecting skeletal metastases in patients with breast carcinoma. It was noted that the metastatic lesions can be visualized on the scans earlier than they are apparent on the X-rays by a mean interval of 4 months.