الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Use of cardiovascular imaging has increased dramatically over the past decade leading to concerns that many of the nuclear cardiology tests being performed may have inappropriate indications, offer limited clinical value, while also increasing medical costs and patient radiation exposure. To promote appropriate use of nuclear cardiology testing, the American College of Cardiology Foundation and other professional societies jointly released in 2005 and updated in 2009 the Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) for radionuclide imaging (RNI).
In recent years, there have been growing concerns in regards to the health risks from exposure to low levels of ionizing radiation related to cardiac imaging, particularly MPI. Although AUC have been developed primarily to curb the excessive spending of health care dollars, using MPI according to AUC has been considered to be an opportunity to reduce patients’ exposure to ionizing radiation.
In this study, 400 adult patients who underwent MPI studies in the nuclear cardiology lab of the cardiology department, Faculty of Medicine, Alexandria University with mean age 58 years, 23.5 % (94) of them were females. Using the medical records, we performed a reassessment of the ordered tests, according to the 2009 ACC/ASNC appropriateness criteria.
70.5% of the studies were classified as appropriate, 8% as inappropriate and 21.5% as uncertain.
The overall appropriate use of MPI studies (70.5%) compares favorably to earlier series that were based upon the 2009 AUC (range 59.8%-83.8%).
The average percentage of inappropriate MPI (8%) falls below the range of earlier reports (10%-24.2%).
One of the limitations to our study was the retrospective design of the study that might affect accuracy of data collection.
In conclusion, our findings are broadly consistent with previous literature.