“What is a nuclear bone scan used for?”
Can you explain to me what a nuclear bone scan means? My doctor scheduled one to understand the effects of my injury but I don't understand what it is.
2 Answers
A Nuclear Bone Scan is done after injecting a small amount of a radioactive material to evaluate various abnormalities of the bones. It helps in diagnosing several diseases, such as:
Bone fracture, stress fracture not quite apparent on plain x-rays, degenerative/ arthritic problems, metastatic disease to bones from various cancers, bone infections- osteomyelitis, Paget’s disease, and many other diseases involving bones.
Bone fracture, stress fracture not quite apparent on plain x-rays, degenerative/ arthritic problems, metastatic disease to bones from various cancers, bone infections- osteomyelitis, Paget’s disease, and many other diseases involving bones.
A nuclear bone scan is a type of diagnostic imaging study that looks at areas of your skeleton that are overactive in terms of bone production. It’s clinical indications for use are many, including evaluating cancer patients for bone metastases, evaluation of primary bone tumors, evaluation of prosthetic joints (most commonly knee and hip replacements) for patients with persistence pain for infection or prosthetic loosening, evaluation for bone infection (osteomyelitis), and other orthopedic indications (back pain in athletes can reveal pars fractures and shin pain in runners can differentiate shin splints from actual fractures).
These is performed by injecting a small amount of a radioactive substance that is linked to an agent that acts much like calcium deposition in the bony surface to detect areas that are overproducing bony matrix. The test can be performed as either a three phase study in which images are taken immediately following injection to evaluate blood flow to an area of interest with delayed pictures take 3-4 hours after injection. This is typically used to when infection is suspected. A regular bone scan is one in which only the delayed images are taken and is used for almost all other indications.
Hope this answers your question.
These is performed by injecting a small amount of a radioactive substance that is linked to an agent that acts much like calcium deposition in the bony surface to detect areas that are overproducing bony matrix. The test can be performed as either a three phase study in which images are taken immediately following injection to evaluate blood flow to an area of interest with delayed pictures take 3-4 hours after injection. This is typically used to when infection is suspected. A regular bone scan is one in which only the delayed images are taken and is used for almost all other indications.
Hope this answers your question.
