Preliminary Report on Scintimetric Evaluation of the Rheumatoid Arthritis Involvement by Dr. V. Siva’s Retention Ratio

Aim: This study aims to propose the utility of Scintimetric Characterization of the tracer activity uptake in the joints afflicted by Rheumatoid arthritis in the bone scans.

Materials and Methods: Three out of five patients of confirmed Rheumatoid arthritis who had bone scans for Bone and joint pains showed presence of skeletal hot spots in various joints. They were subjected to the scintimetric evaluation of the skeletal hot spots by Dr. V. Siva’s retention ratio by repeating the 24 hr delayed bone scans. The 58 skeletal hotspots seen in various joint spaces were subjected to the calculation of maximum counts in 3 hr and 24 hr bone scans. They were tabulated and 3/24 hr Dr. V. Siva’s Retention Ratio was calculated and analyzed.

Results: They showed a mean of 5.91 ± 0.35 and standard error of means as 0.3496. The estimated variance was 8.8408 and the estimated standard deviation was 2.9734. For this sample size the estimated variance was 6.6306 and estimated standard deviation was 2.575 by HOJO’s modification. This was unavoidable due to very small size of the Sample population.

Conclusion: Thus this study had shown that the scintimetric evaluation of the skeletal hotspots in the Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients showed a definitive benign value. This could provide a firm base line value to assess the response to treatment and progression as well.