Postoperative assessment of cerebral neoplasms: the need for an early brain scan.

Brain scans were performed on 40 patients who had had craniotomies for nonmalignant disease during the preceding 11 years. A significant decrease in radioactivity at the craniotomy site with time was found, and in nine patients studied five years post craniotomy there was no activity at all. Because of the frequent difficulty in interpreting the postcraniotomy brain scan when searching for recurrent tumours, it is recommended that baseline scans be obtained a few months after the operation to allow comparison of increased radioactivity at the craniotomy site with what may be seen on future brain scans.