Having a Bone Scan

If you are referred for a bone scan this will be undertaken at The Southampton University Hospital, in the Department of Nuclear Medicine.

Directions for how to get there will be sent out to you. There are no special preparations for a bone scan. You can eat and drink normally both beforehand and afterwards.

A bone scan involves the injection of a very small amount of radioactive tracer, bound to a substance which sticks for a while to active bone cells. After you arrive, this is one of the first things that will happen. You will be give an injection into a vein in your arm, in the same way as taking a blood sample. The tracer needs about two to four hours to stick to the bone cells and shouldn't cause any side effects. So during this time you are free to go away and perhaps have a coffee or do some shopping.

After the tracer has had time to stick to the bone cells, pictures are taken using a special device called a Gamma Camera which is sensitive to the very slight amounts of activity from the tracer. It can therefore map out the activity of the bone cells in your body. Images will usually be obtained of the activity throughout the entire skeleton, but we may also focus on specific areas of the spine, taking highly detailed pictures of the activity in areas of specific concern.

The gamma camera is quite a large device, suspended from the ceiling, and you will lie on a couch beneath this while the images are obtained. This usually takes between 45 minutes and an hour.

The injection of a radioactive tracer sounds rather worrying, but in fact it is such a tiny amount that it is not dangerous. Your body will get rid of the tracer quite quickly in the urine, and with it the minute amount of radiation. For this reason you will be asked to pass water before you leave the department and you will be encouraged to drink plenty of fluids. Most of the tracer will be cleared from your system within 12 hours.

Since small amounts of radiation are involved, even though these are tiny, we avoid undertaking a bone scan if you might be pregnant, so please let us know if this is a possibility. If you are breast feeding you should express and discard milk for the 24 hours after the injection, by which time there will be no radiation in the milk.

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