Evaluation of Skeletal Metastasis Distribution on Whole-Body Bone Scintigraphy

Objective: aim of this study was to evaluate which cancer type makes metastasis to which part of skeletal system by whole body bone scintigraphy.materials and methods: one thousand three hundred and seventy-three patients who were referred to our department for bone scintigraphy throughout a 3 years period were retrospectively evaluated. cancers were classified as lung, breast, prostate, stomach and other carcinoma types.bone metastases of patients were noted according to their localization.results: the number of cancer patients who were included into the study was 838. the diagnosis of those patients were; breast (302 patients), prostate (158 patients), lung (126 patients), stomach (42 patients) and other (210 patients) carcinomas. the number of metastatic patients found to be as follows: breast (72 patients), prostate (68 patients), lung (62 patients), stomach (6 patients) and others (57 patients) respectively. the most common metastatic sites of these patients were vertebral colon, pelvis, extremities, costae and other sites respectively. according to our results the most common carcinomas that make metastasis to skeletal system were prostate, breast, lung, stomach cancer respectively, and 27% of other types of cancers had bone metastasis.conclusion: visualisation of metastatic bone lesions in 1/4 of cancer patients indicated the importance of whole body bone scintigraphy for these patients. the high frequency of the metastatic extremity lesions in the prostate and the other carcinoma group is conspicuous.extremities should be the sites that we pay more attention in our routine practice.