Nuclear medicine communications
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There are conflicting results from studies on whether ventilation scintigraphy can be safely omitted or replaced by chest radiography. These studies were based on planar ventilation/perfusion (V/Q) scintigraphy. We evaluated the value of the ventilation single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) on the final conclusion drawn from a V/Q SPECT and the possible role of the chest radiography as a surrogate for the ventilation SPECT. ⋯ Our study showed that the omission of a ventilation SPECT led to a high rate of false-positive diagnoses and that the ventilation scan cannot be replaced by a chest radiography.