Ytterbium 169 citrate in the diagnosis of lung opacities of cancerous origin

Lung scintigraphy for tumour exploration has been widely studied for some years, but unfortunately with the many radioisotopes used at present this examination is not entirely reliable. It seemed interesting therefore to investigate a new tracer, 169Yb citrate, the properties of which were demonstrated recently by HISADA. To estimate the specificity of this tracer we chose 62 records of different bronchopulmonary diseases. After an introductory review of various diagnostic methods the physical and physiological characteristics of ytterbium citrate and its method of use are described, then the records examined are presented and our thoughts and conclusions discussed. 169Yb citrate possesses excellent biophysical properties for tumour scintigraphy but this isotope, though causing no radioactive pollution, delivers an appreciable irradiation dose to the patient examined. It has a positive tropism for pathological lung images. The fixation index of the documents taken separately, apart from that of the 14th day, cannot distinguish between benign and malignant diseases. This is possible with the kinetic uptake curve and the index ratios for the 2nd and 14th days. With these diagnostic criteria the overall results are better than those obtained with other commonly used radioisotopes: true positives 70%, false negatives 11%, false positives 4.5%