'For' or 'against' bone scintigraphy of patients with breast cancer.

Present opinions about the efficacy of bone scintigraphy of patients with breast cancer are widely different. The present article is an attempt to assess the possibilities of such a test through a retrospective analysis of bone scintigraphies of 422 patients with breast cancer made during the course of 6 years. The scintigrams were positive in 30.6% of the patients who have had symptoms from any part of their bone system and only in 6.1% of the patients with no complaints. The percentage of positive scintigrams varies from 14.3 to 42.1% depending on the stage of the cancer. All patients scanned before their operation had normal scintigrams; metastases in the bones appeared after the intervention. The time for the appearance of bone metastases in the different groups varies between 20.7 and 50.9 months. In conclusion we confirm those cases in which bone scintigraphy is applicable.