Thirty-seven non-elderly primary Sjögren's syndrome (I SS) patients, and 27 controls complaining of xerostomia and/or recurrent or persistent swelling of at least one parotid or submandibular gland due to other selected disorders, were studied. A new scintigraphic score (scsc) is proposed for a standardised semiquantitative evaluation of salivary involvement by qualitative sequential salivary scintigraphy (SSS), and is compared with two other well-known methods generally used for this purpose. The scsc proved to be much more suitable for such an evaluation: the other criteria did not allow us either to classify or to score a great number of cases. Furthermore, the scsc allowed us to obtain better SSS sensitivity (89.2%) and specificity (96.3%) values for I.SS (33 of the 37 I SS patients and 26 of the 27 controls were correctly classified by discriminant analysis, for scsc values greater than 8). This was made possible by the different "weights" which we assigned to the various glandular and oral parameters in the scsc determination.
