Gallium scans for staging small cell lung cancer.

The high incidence of gallium 67 accumulation in lung cencer has made radioistope scanning with this agent useful in identifying the extent of cancer locally. However, we investigated the usefulness of whole-body gallium 67 scanning, compared with physical examination, bone, liver and brain scans, and bone marrow aspirate and biopsy, in detecting metastases outside the chest in 47 patients with small cell lung cancer. In each case whole-body scanning with gallium 67 was inferior to the other methods used to detect extrathoracic tumor deposits.