Quality assurance in myocardial perfusion tomography: a collaborative BNCS/BNMS audit programme. British Nuclear Cardiology Society/British nuclear Medicine Society.

The aim of this study was to assess the status of acquisition and reporting of myocardial perfusion tomography in the UK. Centres were asked to provide an expert panel with clinical and technical information, digital and hard copy of raw data and reconstructed tomograms, as well as their report (optional) for five randomly selected studies. Ninety studies were received from 18 centres; report text was provided for 66 studies. Six parameters (stress technique, radiopharmaceutical usage, image acquisition and processing, report images and text) were scored as good (2), adequate (1) or poor (0) by consensus. Centres received the quality scores for each study and a consensus clinical report from the panel. Stress technique was scored as inadequate in 10 (11%) studies, radiopharmaceutical usage and image acquisition as inadequate in 5 (6%) studies, image processing as inadequate in 8 (10%) studies and report images as inadequate in 2 (3%) studies. Report text was felt to be inadequate in 21 of 66 (32%) studies; in 11 of these (52%), the report text was judged to be incorrect and in 10 (48%) it was essentially correct but misleading because of poor phraseology. The mean quality score per study was 1.3 (range 0.5-2.0). Seventeen of 88 (19%) studies scored less than 1.0 and were considered to be of poor quality. In conclusion, a large variation in standards of myocardial perfusion tomography was seen. Data acquisition was generally satisfactory, but 32% of reports were inadequate.