A secondary analysis of patients with calcium scores of 600 or greater confirmed that pretest probability for coronary artery disease (CAD) and coronary calcium scoring are important factors in the effectiveness of CT angiography (CTA) to exclude or confirm the presence of obstructive CAD, according to a study published online Jan. 17 in Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The results showed that CTA should not be extended to patients with substantial coronary calcification, according to an accompanying editorial comment.
A study published in the Sept. 27 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that, in emergency department (ED) patients experiencing low-risk, acute chest pain, the use of early coronary computed tomographic angiography (CCTA) is a more rapid and cost-efficient test than rest-stress myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI). An editorial in the same issue of the journal, while acknowledging the study’s conclusions in some cases, stressed that there are many factors that could make other tests besides CCTA more beneficial.
High-pitch, dual-source CT scanners may enable physicians to sustain diagnostic accuracy while allowing up to seven-fold reductions in pediatric radiation dose, according to a study presented this weekend at the Society of Cardiovascular CT (SCCT) in Denver.
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The CT dose of an individual scan may be just a drop in a bucket, but at present, radiologists know neither the size of the drop nor the rate of emission, making dose tracking inaccurate and dose reduction all the more essential, according to a radiation dose safety session presented June 2 at the annual conference for the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM).
Two years ago, University of Chicago Hospitals launched a Continuous Quality Improvement project aimed at reining in the impact of reimbursement cuts in CT imaging. The project revised the definition of turn-around time, applied basic principles of electronic workflow orchestration to the scanning suite and yielded astounding results, shared Paul J. Chang, MD, professor and vice chairman, radiology informatics and medical director, enterprise imaging at University of Chicago Hospitals.
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