The usefulness of scintigraphy in diagnosis of rarely located osteoid osteoma

The purpose of this work was to demonstrate the usefulness the three-phase bone scintigraphy in the diagnosis of rarely located osteoid osteoma, for example in foot, spine and joint area. The examined group included 43 patients of mean age 19 years. Bone scintigraphy with MDP99mTc was performed using three-phase technique. In 95% of the cases scintigraphy images were typical for osteoid osteoma, in 5% centrally placed nidus was not visualized. Despite of more and more commonly employed computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging, three-phase bone scintigraphy remains the method of choice, especially when the nidus is localized in the spongy bone or recurrence after non-radical surgery is suspected. (author)