Bone marrow immunoscintigraphy compared with conventional bone scintigraphy for the detection of bone metastases

Immunoscintigraphy of haematopoetic bone marrow was compared to conventional bone scanning in 141 patients with malignant disease. Forty patients had breast cancer, 25 prostatic carcinoma, 14 kidney or bladder cancer, 13 bronchial carcinoma, 39 malignant lymphoma and 10 multiple myeloma. A total of 18,800 skeletal regions were evaluated. Marrow scans showed more metastatic lesions than bone scanning in all patient subgroups. Computerized tomography was concordant with bone marrow scintigraphy in 83.3% of 323 skeletal sites. Bone marrow scans in 30 control patients with fever of unknown origin were abnormal only in 3 patients and in only 7 out of 2,135 skeletal regions examined. In patients with malignant lymphoma, bone marrow histology or aspiration cytology was concordantly positive in 14 and concordantly negative in 17 patients. We conclude that immunoscintigraphy of haematopoetic bone marrow provides a reliable, sensitive and safe novel approach for non-invasive detection of metastatic spread to the skeleton.