The present study was performed to evaluate quality of bone scintigraphy in patients with and without water loading, Patients wer divided into two groups ; group I (n=19) was loaded water. Group I patients were loaded water within 5min after Tc-99m HMDP injection. Group II (n=19) was not loaded water. Group II patients were limited in water in take until the acquisition of radionuclide data. Bone scintigraphy was obtained about 3.3 hr after radiotracer administrarion. Regions of interest were placed manually ober those of whole-body, femoral bone, rib and soft tissue. The average counts of whole-body were 712322±121701 in group. and 854631±167015 in group II. The results were significantly different between groups I and II (p<0.05). Further, the ratio of average pixel counts in femoral bone and rib against soft tissue showed a significant difference between groups I and II (p<0.05). In conclusion, our data emphasize that water loading after Tc-99m HMDP injection may contribute to improve the scintigraphic contrast.
