The usefulness of bone and bone-marrow scintigraphy in the detection of bone involvement in patients with multiple myeloma

We used a combination of bone and bone-marrow scintigraphy to evaluate bone involvement in 15 patients with multiple myeloma (7 in untreated group and 8 in chemotherapy group). Of the 3 cases in untreated group whose 99mTc-methylene diphosphonate (MDP) bone scans showed no abnormality, one had abnormal 99mTc-suffer colloid bone-marrow scintigraphy. In other 4 cases of untreated group whose bone scan showed cold defects, bone-marrow scintigraphy delineated clearly the areas of tumor-cell invasion. On the other hand, in all chemotherapy cases, multiple hot spots were observed on bone scintigram, but on bone-marrow scintigram abnormalities were not recognized. In conclusion, the combination scintigraphy of bone and bone-marrow was a useful method in evluating bone involvement in patients with multiple myeloma. (author)