Experiences from the evaluation of two global quality indicators in a radiology service

The main objective in radiology is to obtain images of good quality for certain diagnosis, without unnecessarily irradiating the patient. This paper shows the results of the reject films and clinical image quality evaluations in the radiology service of the Hospital 'Abel Santamaria Cuadrado', Pinar del Rio, Cuba. Data were collected during March and September of 2012. Reject films analysis was done for conventional and mammography studies. Clinical image quality evaluated following the European Guidelines on Quality Criteria. The results show that reject films rate decreased from 6% on March to 1.3% on September, after applying corrective actions; while chests studies have the highest reject rate. The mean causes for rejections were maladjustments in the collimation system, equipment faults, sub exposure and overexposure. For mammography studies the initial reject rate was 29.3% and decreased to 5.9% on September. Mean causes for rejection were related to faults in the automatic processor and the mammography x-ray unit. Image quality also improved: only 48.3% of chest images and 10% of mammography images were considered to be acceptable for diagnosis at the first moment; while these percentages increased to 68.3% and 70% for chest and mammography studies, respectively in the September's evaluation. The study demonstrated that the frequently evaluation of the quality's indicators allows to identify the main causes of the image's detriment to propose corrective actions. Still in situations of insufficient resources it is possible to improve quality with simple interventions on the main faults detected. (Author)