Abnormally increased uptake in the palm and the thumb as the result of a bone imaging agent injection into the radial artery

The "glove" phenomenon is caused by arterial injection of a bone-imaging ag ent into the antecubital fossa. The authors describe a patient who incident ally received an arterial injection of bone-imaging agent into the right di stal radial artery near the wrist, which resulted in a "hot" palm and thumb . The phenomenon of hot palm and thumb can be explained by normal anatomic- physiologic blood flow after radial artery injection. The radial artery con tributes the blood supply to the thumb through the dorsal metacarpal arteri es of the first metacarpals, and the dorsal carpal branch of the radial art ery, a branch of the interosseous artery, and dorsal carpal branch of the u lnar artery form the dorsal carpal rete. The normal vascular anatomic-physi ologic dynamic constituted the mixture and dilution effects after the dista l radial artery injection that resulted in hot areas limited to the palm an d thumb of the hand on bone scintigraphy.