Sclerotic bone disease

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Sclerotic bone disease

  • The bones should be checked on all abdominal X-rays.
  • This patient with hypercalcaemia - which was the cause of abdominal pain - has multiple sclerotic bone lesions (highlighted in red on the roll-over image).
  • The sclerotic lesions are due to metastatic prostate cancer in this patient.

Lytic bone disease

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Lytic bone disease

  • The dilated loops of small bowel are the cause of this patient's abdominal pain.
  • Systematic review of the rest of the image demonstrates multiple small lucent areas in the bones, due to multiple myeloma in this patient.

Lytic bone disease

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Lytic bone disease

  • Small bowel obstruction is again obvious on this image.
  • There is also a large lucent area above the left acetabulum with a pathological fracture. This lytic bone lesion was due to direct invasion of a pelvic tumour, also the cause of small bowel obstruction.

Page author: Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust UK (Read bio)

Last reviewed: October 2019