MRI and bone scan on the same day

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Can MRI and bone scan be done on the same day? Would results be affected by doing one after the other?

Thanks for your help.

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  • Kleenex
    Kleenex Member Posts: 764
    edited October 2009

    I had a CT scan and a bone scan on the same day. With the MRI as with a CT scan, they inject you with the contrast solution and it passes through your system fairly quickly while they take a look at where it "lights up," which are areas of activity in the body (bad description, but I hope you get the idea - solution flows through you during a fairly short period of time and a scan is made while this is happening). With the bone scan, they inject you with some radio-opague dye that takes several hours to be taken up by your bones, whereupon you return to the facility and then they "look" at your bones to see any highlighted areas. Different solutions, different body systems, different machines looking at different things.

    I don't think that having both in one day would be problematic, other than it wouldn't be a very fun day! The day I had the CT and bone scan was not one of my best...

    (I also had MRI's done of my breasts about two weeks earlier than the CT/bone scan day - also very not fun, as the facility did one breast as a time. So I drove 45 minutes and laid in the machine for an hour and a half the first day and then came back the NEXT day and did the other side. I had something of a reaction to the imaging solution which I think was due to the speed with which it was infused into my hand, so when I had the CT infusion, I asked them to be very careful, whereupon the technician used a bigger vein in my arm, with good results.)

    More info than you needed, but I think if they've scheduled you for both on the same day, they are likely trying to keep you from making multiple trips. A good person to ask would actually be the staff where you are having the scans done (pehaps a radiologist reads the results?), as they do this all the time.

    Good luck to you!

  • americanpinay
    americanpinay Member Posts: 338
    edited October 2009

    Thanks, Kleenex.

  • rkt
    rkt Member Posts: 793
    edited October 2009

    I travel to MD Anderson to see my oncologist and have scans.  They routinely will schedule bone scan, followed by PET scan, and when I was there last March, I had an MRI of my spine after the PET scan.  They have always done them in that order (never PET first, then bone).  Biggest issue is going without food or drink for so long - from midnight night before, and it usually is almost 2 by time I get done with PET scan, so I am starving - 

    Becky

  • americanpinay
    americanpinay Member Posts: 338
    edited October 2009

    Thanks, RKT. If you don't mind, I have a couple of follow-up questions. Do you always have a bone scan AND a PET scan? Why did you have to have an MRI after the PET scan? Are there stuff that they see on MRI that are not on the PET? Also, are your PET scans combined with CT? Thanks again for responding. Take care.

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