A patient with atypical presentation of polymyalgia rheumatica is presented. Her major symptoms were mild weakness, pain on passive movement of the shoulder and hip girdles, with mild tenderness but no joint stiffness. Muscle enzymes were within the normal range. The diagnostic work-up included gallium-67 scintigraphy, which showed intense uptake in both shoulders, with remarkable improvement f...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate gallium-67 (67Ga) uptake and the value of 67Ga scintigraphy for diagnosis of macrophagic myofasciitis (MMF), a recently identified inflammatory myopathy. METHODS Twelve consecutive patients with MMF confirmed by muscle biopsy, 10 with polymyositis, 10 with sarcoidosis, 8 with fibromyalgia, and 10 with lymphoma without muscle symptoms (serving as normal controls for muscl...

Received 7/15/2009; revised 7/31/2009; accepted 7/31/2009. For correspondence and reprints contact: Shih-Chuan Tsai, M.D., Department of Nuclear Medicine, Taichung Veterans General Hospital. 160 Section 3, Taichung Harbor Road, Taichung 407, Taiwan. Tel: (886)4-23592525 ext. 4801, Fax: (886)423741348, E-mail: [email protected] We present the case of a 62-year-old man experiencing persistent f...

A 32-year-old woman was admitted to our hospital with fever and shoulder pain. Gallium-67 scintigraphy revealed uptake in the anterior chest region corresponding to the descending thoracic aorta (Picture 1). Although the findings of enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and MRI angiography appeared normal, the scintigraphy results indicated a diagnosis of early Takayasu’s arteritis (TA). Fo...

Background. The presence of ulcerative colitis (UC) with no bowel symptoms, as fever of unknown origin (FUO), is uncommon. Objective. To describe the case of an 80-year-old woman who presented with fever, with a history of UC under treatment with mesalazine. Case Presentation. She was admitted due to fever lasting for 12 days with no associated symptoms. Seven years earlier, she was diagnosed w...

Received October 23, 2008. Accepted after revision January 30, 2009. sive to home treatment. Later, the patient had observed the emergence of nodules in the inguinal region. No fever or weight loss was observed. Clinical examination demonstrated the presence of an ulcerovegetating tumor with 15 cm in diameter on the medial aspect of the left thigh, besides bilateral painless inguinal lumps, the...

introduction: gallium-67 citrate has been known as a good infection agent in nuclear medicine for decades. in this work the value of 67ga-citrate has been investigated in infected animal models using spect imaging at optimized/standardized conditions. methods: the bacterial (staphylococcus aureus; s.a. and escherichia coli; e.c.) and fungal (candidae albicans; c.a.) species from standard sourc...

A 61-year-old, right-handed woman noticed progressive weakness of pinching and numbness of the right hand. Although she was previously diagnosed and treated as non-Hodgkin lymphoma, gallium-67 scintigraphy did not show

BACKGROUND The diagnosis of spondylodiscitis can be difficult, because the patients history, subjective symptoms and physical findings are often inconclusive, particularly in the early stages. AIM To perform an overview on the role of nuclear medicine procedures with single photon emission tomography (SPET) and positron emission tomography (PET) tracers in the diagnosis of spondylodiscitis. ...