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Visualization of the spleen by radioisotope scanning depends on achieving a high concentration of a radioactive isotope in the organ relative to its surrounding tissues. During the past three years, we have routinely used a technique reported in 1960.^1,2The method depends on the ability of the spleen to remove moderately damaged red blood cells from the circulation.³Cr⁵¹-labeled red blood cells are damaged by heating for one hour at 50 C. After intravenous injection, the isologous labeled red cells accumulate rapidly in the spleen, which can then be delineated by scintillation scanning.

The Table summarizes the clinical usefulness of splenic scanning. The most frequent use of splenic scanning has been in defining whether a palpable mass in the left side of the abdomen is an enlarged spleen. It has also been used to detect space-occupying lesions, absent or non functioning splenic tissue, as, for example,