How to determine the presence of bone metastases

Bone metastasis refers to the presence of the primary tumor, the tumor metastasizes to bone tissue through blood, lymph or local migration, causing bone tissue destruction, and patients often experience painful symptoms. Therefore, bone metastasis can be judged by patients’ clinical symptoms, as well as imaging examination and pathological examination.1. Clinical symptoms: Patients with bone metastasis will first appear painful manifestations, and the pain will gradually progress and may appear as nocturnal pain or resting pain. If the metastases compress the nerve roots and spinal cord, it may also lead to paraplegia and sciatica and other manifestations. If the disease continues to progress, the function of bone will be decreased and even pathological fracture may appear. 2. Imaging examination: In order to clarify bone metastasis, some examinations can be done for patients, the most common ones are X-ray, whole body bone scan, etc., which can detect the bones with or without lesions in the whole body at an early stage. MRI or CT can also be done, and even PET-CT can be used to check whether metastasis occurs in the organ tissues of the whole body. 3. Pathological examination: It is the gold standard for bone metastasis diagnosis and can clarify the pathological type of bone metastasis. It is recommended to ask an experienced physician to perform pathological puncture to improve the accuracy of puncture diagnosis and reduce complications.