Is bone scan dangerous?

This is an automatically translated article.

The article is professionally consulted by Master, Doctor Nguyen Quang Duc - Doctor of Nuclear Medicine - Department of Diagnostic Imaging and Nuclear Medicine - Vinmec Times City International General Hospital

Bone scintigraphy is a diagnostic aid that allows to investigate and find out bone lesions as well as tumors that have metastasized to the bone organization of the patient. Because bone scans put radioactive materials into the patient's body, the issue of whether bone scans are dangerous is being of great concern today.

1. What is a bone scan?

Bone scintigraphy is a procedure that helps find bone lesions such as infection, trauma, or malignancy. Compared with other imaging methods such as X-ray, bone scan helps to detect these diseases in a few months earlier. A special thing about the bone scan method is that radioactive material will be injected into the patient's body through a vein, into the bone and will help mark the locations where the abnormality occurs. Sites that absorb little or no radioactive material indicate a lack of blood supply to the bone or show signs of cancer cells.
On the contrary, if you absorb a lot of radioactive substances, it means that the bone area is increasing bone formation which can be a sign of osteomyelitis, bone tumor, fracture, infection,...
Clinically, these cases In the following specific cases, a bone scan is indicated:
Suspected bone cancer. There are signs of cancer metastases from other places to bones such as breast, kidney, lung,... Other clinical features such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are used to confirm the diagnosis. In cases of fractures that are not clearly visible on X-ray, bone scans will help evaluate fractures in these cases more effectively. Paget's disease, bone infection. Before performing a bone scan, the patient needs to consider a few things as follows:
Immediately tell the treating doctor about your pregnancy if any, because the radioactive substance injected into the body will cause harm. effects on fetal development, it is important to let the doctor know about this problem so that a switch to another subclinical means of less risk can be made. Similarly, if the mother is breastfeeding, the mother also needs to notify the doctor because radioactive substances when injected intravenously can enter the breast milk and affect the baby when breastfeeding. Therefore, during this time, it is recommended to give breast milk that has been prepared and stored before, and breast milk secreted in the first 1-2 days after the scan should be discarded and absolutely not. give this milk to the baby. Certain medications can affect the results of your scan, so it's important to tell your doctor about any medications you're taking. The patient will also be given extra fluids to drink after the radiation injection. Patients are prepared bladder, bladder emptying before the procedure. After injecting radioactive material, it is necessary to wait for a period of 1-3 hours for the drug to reach places in the body. In terms of results, if the patient does not have any of these problems with the bone system, the radionuclide image will be evenly distributed to all bones in the body and there is not too much difference. between these regions. If the patient has a condition where the radioactive material is concentrated too much or too little in a certain location, and other bone sites in the body are normal, it is possible to see an existing lesion in these locations. This could be inflammation, bone cancer, bone metabolism disorders, bone anemia,...
MORE: Is it necessary to isolate after the bone scan?

2. Is bone scan dangerous?

Because radioactive material is used during the scan, the patient will also be exposed to this poison, however, the level is very small. In fact, through many surveys, patients after bone scans rarely experience life-threatening complications because radioactive substances will be eliminated after a certain period of time. . However, in order to ensure maximum safety for the patient and those around them, it is necessary to clean the toilet immediately after the radioactive material is discharged by using soap, rinsing all the body's body with soap and water. can be excreted to the outside. In addition, after the procedure, the patient may also feel pain at the needle puncture site, can use warm compresses to relieve pain during this time.
Bone scintigraphy is an effective imaging tool in the field of diagnosing bone-related diseases, including tumors that have metastasized from other organs to the bone. Although radioactive substances are used during the procedure, this method has almost no serious impact on the patient's health, and the patient only needs to clean up after being exposed to chemicals. radiation can be prevented.

In order to perform bone scintigraphy for clear and accurate diagnosis results, Vinmec International General Hospital has now introduced the SPECT/CT Discovery NM/CT 670 Pro system with the most modern 16-sequence CT of Vietnam. The world's leading medical equipment manufacturer GE Healthcare (USA), for high quality images, helps in early diagnosis of bone diseases to be investigated. Accordingly, the entire examination and imaging process at Vinmec is performed by a team of experienced medical staff, well-trained at home and abroad, so they can advise and support maximum. for customers during the shooting process, even for foreign customers.
Customers wishing to learn about bone imaging techniques at Vinmec can contact the hospital for service.

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