The Renal Scan

THE RENAL SCAN utilizing chloromerodrin Hg 203 (Neohydrin) has recently been utilized in the diagnosis of renal artery disease,¹,²space occupying lesions of the kidney,¹and localization of functioning renal tissue prior to urological surgery.³Mercury has been shown⁴to be rapidly taken up by the renal cortex and then temporarily fixed within the tubular cells. The scintillation detector then can be used to locate and map functioning renal tissue. Since the resulting scan is a spatial image of the kidneys in relationship to the topographical anatomy, it would appear to be valuable in locating the kidneys for renal biopsy. Recently, there has been reported⁵a method utilizing the portable scintillation detector with chloromerodrin Hg 203 for locating the site of renal biopsy. We have been employing the renal scan routinely for determining the biopsy site. It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate an