Introduction:

Bone and joint disease has a high incidence and impact on the population. The bone scan is a diagnostic tool that provides important metabolic and clinical information; therefore the interpretation of the images by the nuclear medicine physician must be very precise. The isotopic distribution pattern in hands has not yet been described. For this reason a description is presented of common scintigraphic findings in adults without osteoarticular disease.

Materials and methods:

A prospective analysis was conducted on 156 hands of patients whose bone scans met inclusion criteria. There were delineated regions of interest in the carpal, metacarpal, proximal, and distal interphalangeal joints of the second and third fingers of both hands. An analysis was made, including the total counts, means, and standard deviations. The cut-offs were selected using the normal distribution, which was defined as the cut at the 99th percentile of each variable. A semi-quantitative analysis was made of the images.

Results:

The study included 36 men (23%) and 119 women (77%), and the mean age was 44.9 ± 13.9. The mean total counts gradually decreased from proximal to distal in all age groups and in both genders in the following proportions: the activity in carpus was 4.4 fold more than the metacarpus; the metacarpus was 1.7 fold more than proximal interphalangeal joint; proximal interphalangeal joint was 1.4 fold more than distal one.

Conclusions:

A scintigraphic pattern consisting of a gradual decrease from proximal to dis-tal joints (degradation) was found in the hands of adults without bone and joint disease, regardless of gender and age.

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