In our department we have found SPECT/CT bone scintigraphy to be especially useful in patients with prostate cancer. These patients frequently have degenerative disease in the spine that can result in false positive diagnosis of metastatic disease. We now routinely perform SPECT/CT of the lumbar spine in all prostate cancer patients expect those with obvious diffuse metastatic disease on their whole body image.

SPECT/CT is also routinely performed in cases where there is a clinical suspicion of degenerative or inflammatory disease in the spine. For other patients, a SPECT/CT is performed after review of the whole body image. We have also found SPECT/CT very useful in assessing degenerative disorders of the feet, as a guide for steroid injection and a way of monitoring the results of surgery. The fusion of the metabolic data and CT give both the radiologist and referring clinician a high degree of confidence in the result.

SPECT/CT bone scintigraphy is a powerful new technique, which combines the functional information from bone scintigraphy with high resolution anatomical information from CT to provide more information than is available from each modality on its own, providing, in many cases, a ‘one-stop-shop’ for assessments of disorders of the spine.