Serial bone scintigraphy for assessing the effectiveness of treatment of osseous metastases from prostatic cancer.

130 serial bone scintigrams were performed to evaluate the course of skeletal metastases under treatment in 36 patients with prostatic cancer. During a successful treatment scintigraphic controls revealed a significant decrease of the metastatic 99mTc-diphosphonate uptake in 14 patients and sometimes even a complete normalization of the skeletal radioactivity distribution, whereas a progression characterized by an increased multifocal radioactivity concentration was registered in 16 patients indicating the failure of the initiated therapy. Based on these results of follow-up studies scintigraphic bone imaging can be recommended for the assessment of the effectiveness of on-going therapy of skeletal metastases.