The clinical role of nuclear medicine in rheumatoid arthritis patients - Acomparison with other diagnostic imaging modalities

In patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) synovitis activity is the domina nt clinical variable that determines the therapeutic approach. At present, the amount of painful and swollen joints assessed by physical examination, is generally used to measure the degree of synovitis activity. A gold stand ard for the assessment of synovitis activity is not available. The availabi lity of an objective and reproducible method to evaluate synovitis activity in RA would be of great value in patient management and in examination of therapeutic effects. Atl advantage of the use of radiopharmaceuticals in de tection of arthritis activity, compared with other imaging techniques, is t he possibility to depict all joints in a single image. Furthermore the tech nique may image joints which are difficult to assess clinically or radiogra phically and may also detect joint inflammation in an early phase. In this overview different scintigraphic techniques are compared with each other an d with other diagnostic imaging modalities.