[Usefulness of a study with 99m Tc-labelled erythrocytes for the recognition of hepatic angioma in the staging of cancer patients].

Cavernous hemangiomas are the commonest benign tumors of the liver. Unfortunately, neither US nor CT allows cavernous hemangiomas to be positively discriminated from more dangerous lesions, e.g. metastases. Blood-pool scintigraphy has been reported to be a reliable technique for diagnosing hemangiomas of the liver: in fact, among the liver lesions in which 99m Tc-red blood cells gradually accumulate, only hemangiomas present an increased accumulation of radiotracers as soon as 2 hours afterwards. To determine the present value of blood-pool scintigraphy in oncological patients, we studied 17 patients whose US staging had shown dubious focal liver lesions. This technique allowed one or more hemangiomas to be diagnosed in 15 cases, and metastatic lesions in 2 cases. Scintigraphy with 99m Tc-labelled red blood cells proves thus to be an accurate method for the identification of cavernous hemangiomas of the liver in case of dubious US findings.