The relative roles of gallium-67-citrate scanning and lymphangiography in the current management of malignant lymphoma.

The usefulness of gallium-67-citrate scanning and lymphangiography in the detection of iliac and paraaortic lymph node involvement was evaluated in 53 patients with Hodgkin's disease and non-Hodgkin's lymphomas who subsequently underwent laparotomy. Our data suggest that the overall accuracies of the two procedures in this regard are comparable. Although in this anatomic area the gallium scan tends to underestimate the presence of disease (higher false-negative rate), the false-negative rate is quite low. The false-negative rate with lymphangiography is lower than with scanning but it tends to overestimate the presence of disease (higher false-positive rate). It was concluded that gallium scanning should be an integral part of the staging of lymphomas and a schema for their clinical staging based on the use of gallium scanning early in the diagnostic sequence is proposed.