Implications of lymphoscintigraphy in oncologic practice: principles and differences vis-a-vis other imaging modalities.

The prompt availability of interstitial lymphoscintigraphy and its utilization offer significant advantages over other techniques. Computed tomography represents a highly sensitive technique that suffers from lack of specificity in detecting small lesions. The expense and accessibility of machine time limit its usefulness as a routine survey procedure. Radiographic lymphangiography represents a tedious and difficult process necessitating identification of lymphatic channels for injection of the contrast material for visualization of the lymph nodes in the region being evaluated. With these demonstrated difficulties, the lymph node scanning technique has emerged as a simple, reliable, and reproducible technique for evaluation of multiple lymph node groups.