The authors present an 18-year-old man who had a 5-month history of a painful left wrist. Despite the prolonged history, discrete photopenia on the blood-pool phase and photopenia relative to the remainder of the ipsilateral carpus on the delayed phase of a bone scan in the region of the lunate was shown. When Kienböck's disease is seen in its late phase, the bone scan findings may be atypical in that they may not show the usual three-phase bone scintigraphic evidence of bone remodeling expected in delayed diagnosis avascular necrosis. A review of the previous literature is presented.