Bone Scans

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Bone Scans

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Bone Scans Hi all. Just wondered if anyone knows the answer to this question. I have just had a Bone Scan today , but have read info. that states that it will pick up arthrits (I’m riddled with it!), and isn’t necessarily the best way to detect bone mets. Does anyone know of any other alternatives to the bone scan?

Thanks

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Hi there Hi there F1fan
As a nurse that works in nuclear medicine and a breast cancer patient, may i tell you what i think? Bone scans are an awesome screening tool. THe radionuclide that we make up and then inject you with is an analogue of phosphate. Now as you probably already know, your bones are constantly remodeling and growing and repairing themselves. Now your bones use phosphates in this remodeling process and so they just incorporate the radioactive phosphate and they don’t know the difference. THis is how we are able to see your bones. Having said this, if you have an area where there is a bone secondary, the bones will be reacting to this and they will be trying to heal themselves. This repair starts quite quickly and we can see this very early. Lesions will appear on a bone scan much earlier than they will on an xray. Xrays look at anatomy. For example, is the bone broken or damaged structurally. A bone scan shows physiology meaning how the bone are functioning.
As a result, bone scans show anything that affects your bones like arthritis, fractures, cancer both primaries and secondaries and trauma.
However, to a trained person like a radiologist, each appears different on film. For the most part, we can tell if a patient has arthritis versus cancer in the bones by the appearance on the film. Each looks differently. Bone secondaries are most common in the axial skeleton meaning the trunk area of your body. This means you are likely to see it on the spine, ribs, legs, skulls etc. Arthritis is most common in the joints. You will see areas of arthritis in knees, hips, feet and hands.
The benfit of having a bone scan is that you can take multiple pictures of all of your bones with a single injection. The amount of radiation that you get with a bone scan in very similar to a single chest xray.
Could you imagine the radiation you would get from having x rays of all of your bones in your body? CTs show great detail of the bone if there is a question of a lesion but the radiation associated with a CT is much greater and so it usually isn’t a first line test.
Rest assured that they should be able to tell between bone secondaries and arthritis and that bone scans are a great staging tool.
I am sorry for such a long reply and i hope that i helped. If you have any other questions about bone scans or nuclear medicine tests, please feel free to ask me. I am NOT an expert but i have worked in the field as a nurse for 10 years so i do know a little bit.
Wishing you the best
karen

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Thanks Karen Many thanks for your reply. It was very informative and I now feel confident that if there was something other than arthrits then this would be picked up. Thanks once again. F1Fan

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Mesage for Karen As if to prove your point, I got a phone call yesterday asking me to come back and have further tests on my wrist and ankle. They have said that they don’t think its anything to worry about and that it is probably arthritis ( I have had it badly in my wrist in the past, although my ankles have been ok until now!). I f anything, if it has shown, , up the arthritis, as you said it could, I actually think that at least I feel relieved that they can tell the difference.