Clinical use and experience with SPECT imaging in 488 hospitals

Recent literature seems to support the concept that SPECT using the rotating head gamma camera system represents a significant diagnostic improvement over planar radionuclide imaging alone. In order to determine how this has translated into clinical use, the author conducted a survey of all nonfederal hospitals with over 300 beds in the United States. Four hundred eighty-eight hospitals responded to the questionnaire, representing a 50% response rate. Two hundred twenty-three of the 488 hospitals have SPECT systems; however, 45 of this 223 never use the SPECT mode. Responses to the question about how often SPECT added significantly to information obtained by planar imaging alone were as follows: 12% stated that it rarely does, 11% stated that it does less than 10% of the time, 18% stated that it does from 10%-25% of the time, 16% from 25%-50% of the time, 16% from 50%-75% of the time, 10% from 75%-90%, and 17% that it almost always adds significant information over planar imaging. In response to a question regarding the cost effectiveness of SPECT, surprisingly, 60 of the 178 users of SPECT stated they did not feel it was cost effective