Evaluation of technetium-99m-MIBI scintigraphy in metastatic differentiated thyroid carcinoma.

Abstract

Technetium-99m-methoxyisobutyl isonitrile (99mTc-MIBI) was evaluated for its ability to detect metastases from thyroid carcinoma. Twenty-seven thyroidectomized patients with metastatic differentiated thyroid carcinoma, of whom 20, 9 and 12 had lung, lymph node and bone metastases, respectively, were examined with 99mTc-MIBI. The scan results were compared with those of 201TI and 131I whole-body scans. Increased accumulation of 99mTc-MIBI was observed in lung metastases of 15 patients (75.0%), 12 lymph node metastases (100.0%) and 29 of 31 bone metastases (93.5%). Increased accumulations of 201TI and 131I scans were seen in, respectively, 16 (80.0%) and 17 (85.0%) of the 20 patients with lung metastases, 12 (100.0%) and 5 (41.7%) of the 12 lymph node metastases and 28 (90.3%) and 27 (85.1%) bone metastases. Because of its better image quality, 99mTc-MIBI detected more lesions in the lung (n = 38) than 201TI did (n = 17). Technetium-99m-MIBI is clinically useful for detecting metastases from differentiated thyroid carcinoma and deserves clinical application in the postoperative follow-up of such patients.