Can (99m)technetium methylene diphosphonate bone scans objectively document costochondritis?

What Was Tested

This controlled clinical trial looks at Methylene blue (non-peptide stack partner).

To determine whether bone imaging with 99mTc methylene diphosphonate is a specific method of making the diagnosis of costochondritis in patients with chest pain who rule out for myocardial infarction.

Who Took Part

The study group was 20 patients.

The age groups tagged for this paper are middle-aged adults, both men and women.

Nonblinded prospective controlled study in 20 patients and 10 control subjects.

Inpatient medical service of a tertiary teaching hospital.

How the Study Was Run

Two hundred consenting patients admitted to the hospital with chest pain and suspected myocardial infarction were examined.

Those in whom acute myocardial infarction was ruled out were evaluated for the clinical signs of costochondritis, ie, tenderness over one or more costochondral junctions.

Twenty patients who met the clinical criterion gave informed consent and were subjected to bone imaging.

Ten control subjects with cancer who did not have clinical signs of costochondritis underwent bone imaging to rule out metastatic disease (normal in all cases).

Bone imaging with I.V. 99mTc methylene diphosphonate.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Bone Neoplasms, Bone and Bones, Chest Pain, Diagnosis, Differential, Observer Variation, Radionuclide Imaging and Technetium Tc 99m Medronate.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a controlled clinical trial of Methylene blue (non-peptide stack partner) in 20 patients.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Its findings take up roughly 3 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 1997 (Chest), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Methylene blue (non-peptide stack partner) compound page, all human trials.