SCINTIGRAPHY OF RENAL-TRANSPLANT

Scintigraphy is useful for monitoring perfusion and function of renal transplant, as well as for diagnosing miscellaneous surgical complications. This non-invasive imaging technique, which uses no deleterious products, is an attractive alternative for patients. This is especially true for those patients in early posttransplant course, with immunity depression and often impairment of renal function. Otherwise, multiple indices with a large range of inter-patient values has not favoured a methodologic and interpretative consensus. Furthermore, the poor specificity of renogram patterns does not allow for discrimination of all etiologies with only one scintigraphy. Nevertheless, follow-up with iterative scintigraphy may be helpful due to the high infra-patient reproducibility and to the early appreciable change of parameters, according to clinical and histological renal posttransplant outcome.