[When should bone scanning be carried out in prostatic cancer?]

Adenocarcinoma of the prostate is the tumour most frequently involved in bone metastasis. With the come back of curative-intended radical surgery to treat this tumour, the diagnostic methodology that tries to rule out or check the existence of dissemination in order to eliminate those surgical procedures which are entirely unnecessary recuperates special relevance. The most simple and effective method to discover the metastasis is through a bone scan. Prostate specific antigen levels have a great predictive value for metastasis, although there are some tumours that for obscure reasons do not express this antigen. Therefore, practice of a routine bone scan is currently considered mandatory in order to diagnose the tumour, most specially when radical prostatectomy is being considered. In patients with disseminated tumours who are receiving medical therapy, the routine practice of periodic bone scanning is not indicated, unless an specific type of therapeutical approach is intended on those metastasis that are resistant to therapy. Subjects undergoing radical prostatectomy are controlled with prostate antigen evaluations. When these levels increase or when clinical symptoms of suspected bone affectation appear, the procedure followed in order to verify the existence of metastasis is bone scanning.