Quality assurance for radiodiagnostic equipment in Uruguay

Since Uruguay did not have an study on X-ray equipment, students of Radiation Protection course (RP) made this field work throughout the country. The objective is to obtain information on the number and kind of X-ray radiodiagnostic equipment. Some of the results are: there are 666 radiodiagnostic equipment. The ratio of population to equipment is 4.515 to 1 in the capital and the mean rate in the rest of the country is 4.383 to one, with a minimum of 1.707 and a maximum of 8.220. The Public Health Ministry (MSP) and the Instituciones de Asistencia Medica Colectiva (a kind of private heath assurance) (IAMC) have less equipment in the capital than in the rest of the country. The 37% of the capital population receives assistance through the IAMC , with a 42.5 % of the equipment. Uruguay except the capital has 18 districts and 17 computed tomography equipment, from which only 3 belong to the MSP. Five districts do not have any. In Montevideo, there are 11.500 females over forty years of age per X-ray mammography equipment, and this relation in the rest of the country is 13.900. There are 21 X-ray Interventional radiology equipment, 16 of them are in the capital. Is from relating the radiodiagnostic equipment, the population and the procedures, that quality assistance indicators emerge. This owns high importance on the way to create a RP National Programme. (author)