Opportunities for improvement on current nuclear cardiology practices and radiation exposure in Latin America: Findings from the 65-country IAEA Nuclear Cardiology Protocols cross-sectional Study (INCAPS)

Comparison of Latin American (LA) nuclear cardiology (NC) practice with that in the rest of the world (RoW) will identify areas for improvement and lead to educational activities to reduce radiation exposure from NC. INCAPS collected data on all SPECT and PET procedures performed during a single week in March-April 2013 in 36 laboratories in 10 LA countries (n = 1139), and 272 laboratories in 55 countries in RoW (n = 6772). Eight “best practices” were identified a priori and a radiation-related Quality Index (QI) was devised indicating the number used. Mean radiation effective dose (ED) in LA was higher than in RoW (11.8 vs 9.1 mSv, p