The gallium "bone scan" in acute leukemia.

A 15-year-old boy with acute leukemia had a gallium-67 scan that was virtually identical to his technetium-99m pyrophosphate bone scan, except for lack of renal visualization. The quality of the radiopharmaceutical was assured by the normal appearance of gallium scan performed in another patient on the same day and with the same radionuclide batch. This extensive osseous uptake was probably due to bone-marrow replacement by leukemia cells and is a pattern that should be recognized as indicating a diffuse marrow-infiltrating disease.