Letter to the Editor

Hi Folks, Just a few lines in a follow-up from November’s Cath Lab Digest Email Discussion Group question... (re: Daily QA on Imaging Equipment). In reading back through the discussion, I wanted to let you know where we are in implementing a QA program. Our yearly testing by a state licensed physicist is part of this and something that we have done regardless of the type of room we have. This testing for us is contracted through UVa (University of Virginia) in Charlottesville and includes the dose limits for all of the settings in our room (pulsed fluoro per magnification, acquisition per magnification, etc...). This year we asked the physicist for recommendations regarding daily QA. He shared that they have a phantom that was made in their machine shop that they use daily to look at visual/optic quality as well as fluoro and cine dose. There are holes of varying depth in the phantom which is a combination of layers of copper and plexi-glass. We have ordered an identical phantom from their machine shop, so beginning in January, we will image this phantom each day using our standard settings and record mA, kV and the number of visible dots. We will be able to document any drift/change in our dose and/or visually quality. We have certainly learned over the years that annual testing does not give sufficient data to determine performance and that our eyes were only able to detect changes in our system after they had changed by more than 10% from baseline which was out of range for acceptable safe patient dose. Natalie D. Beiler Cardiac Cath Lab Supervisor Rockingham Memorial Hospital nbeiler@rhcc.com

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