False-Positive Radioiodine Scans in Thyroid Cancer

Abstract

The whole-body radioiodine scan remains an important component in the postoperative treatment of patients with well-differentiated thyroid cancer. Because normal thyroid tissue remnants and residual or metastatic foci of well-differentiated thyroid cancer have the unique ability to concentrate, organify, and store radioiodine, the wholebody scan provides a depiction of those tissues that can be ablated with therapeutic doses of radioiodine. Over time, it has become obvious that the whole-body scan may also reveal foci of radioiodine accumulation from a wide variety of other causes. This chapter provides an update of an article in the Seminars of Nuclear Medicine* in 2000 that detailed the pathophysiological classification of artifacts, anatomic and physiological variants, and nonthyroidal diseases that may give rise to false-positive whole body scans in postoperative patients with thyroid cancer.KeywordsThyroid CancerThyroid CarcinomaPapillary Thyroid CarcinomaThyroid TissuePapillary Thyroid CancerThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.