How useful are ventilation-perfusion lung scans in elderly patients?

Full text: Parenchymal and bronchial lung diseases reduce the value of lung scans for the detection of pulmonary emboli by causing matched ventilation and perfusion defects. As these forms of lung disease are more common in the elderly, 1192 lung scans were reviewed to try and asses the impact of aging on the clinical value of lung scans: The results confirm an increasing rate of intermediate probability scans with greater age, but a high proportion of scans continue to produce clinically useful results, particularly as elderly patients are twice as likely to have a high probability scan. Lung scans are particularly useful in the elderly, as there seems to be a very low use of pulmonary angiography in spite of the fact that the incidence of pulmonary emboli is probably greater