Bone scintigraphy in the diagnosis of bone invasions of face and skull epitheliomas and ORL neoplasms

Bone scintigraphy has been considerably improved by the use of technetium 99m-labelled organic phosphates: the physical characteristics are almost ideal for detection and the extemporaneous labelling of the product is convenient. This study on 75 patients has proved the value of bone scintigraphy in evaluating the bone invasion of tumoral lesions affecting the face and skull. An 88% agreement was found for scintigraphy, radiography giving 81%. The technique allows a fast assessment of whole-body bone invasion from one examination, with no extra injection of radioactive product, and it is therefore possible to orient the radiological enquiry without having to X-ray the whole skeleton, which reduces the amount of irradiation delivered to the organism. From these observations it may be concluded that scintigraphy is a simple, harmless method, with many advantages, but its limits must be known and it must always be interpreted as a function of other clinical and radiological data. It should be systematic in research on the local spreading of face and skull epitheliomas, in neoplasms of the ORL sphere and in the search for bone metastases