Liver Scanning in Patients With Suspected Abdominal Tumor

Despite technical advances, the number of patients with hepatic metastases not visualized by liver scanning remains high; more important, there is a significant incidence of false-positive reports. Preoperative scans of 70 patients with a high probability of abdominal tumor were compared with the incidence of hepatic metastases found at laparotomy. The overall accuracy of the liver scan was 84%; there were 13% false-positive and 23% false-negative results. Thus, the chance for error is too high to determine the existence of hepatic metastases on the results of liver scanning alone.