Bone Scan: Indications Revisited

Skeletal scintigraphy is one of the most widely performed investigations in any nuclear medicine department. However, there has been a paradigm shift in the indications for which bone scan was performed in the past 3 decades, mainly due to advancement in other imaging modalities, better disease understanding, and the development of newer disease-specific guidelines. The metastatic indications for bone scans accounted for 60.3% of cases in 1998 which reduced to 15.5% in 2021 and nonmetastatic indications rose from 39.7% in 1998 to 84.5% in 2021. Fewer bone scans are being performed for the metastatic survey, and more scans are being performed for nononcological orthopedic and rheumatological indications. This article captures the journey of skeletal scintigraphy in the past three decades.