Bone scintigraphy in evaluation of heel pain in Reiter's disease: compared with radiography and clinical examination.

Tc-99m MDP bone scans were used to evaluate the heel pain (talalgia) in 38 patients with Reiter's disease, and compared with clinical examination and radiologic findings. In our work, 58% (22/38) patients presented talalgia with a total of 35 lesions. Only two lesions of clinical talalgia were missed by the bone scan. The diagnostic sensitivity was as high as 94% (33/35). However, the diagnostic sensitivity of radiography was only 69% (11/16) when the disease duration was more than one year; furthermore, it declined to 33% (4/12) when the disease duration was less than one year. Based on the bone scans, the correlation between positive scintigraphic findings and clinical talalgia was extremely good. Clinical talalgia occurred in all the 33 lesions demonstrated by bone scan. However, three lesions demonstrated by radiography were not consistent with clinical talalgia and not visualized by radioscintigraphy. Our data show that the radionuclide scan is a more sensitive indicator and has better correlation with clinical talalgia than radiography. We consider that bone scintigraphy is superior to radiography in the evaluation of heel pain in Reiter's disease.