title: The value of gallium-67 scanning in pulmonary tuberculosis.
abstract: We studied 59 patients presumed to have pulmonary tuberculosis to determine whether gallium-67 citrate scintigraphy could improve diagnostic accuracy and help clinical decision making for empiric treatment pending culture results. The sensitivity of 67Ga scintigraphy was 95% and the specificity 27%. Our positive predictive value of 69% does not contribute substantially to increase the prior probability of diagnosis in settings similar to ours. The existence of a false negative rate essentially precludes the use of the scan to rule out active disease. The use of the scan for clinical decisions in pulmonary tuberculosis is not recommended.
mesh_terms: D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005188:False Negative Reactions; D005189:False Positive Reactions; D005710:Gallium Radioisotopes; D006801:Humans; D013902:Radiography, Thoracic; D011877:Radionuclide Imaging; D013183:Sputum / Q000382:microbiology; D014397:Tuberculosis, Pulmonary / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000382:microbiology
chemical_list: D005710:Gallium Radioisotopes