October 26, 2010 - The Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT) has collaborated with the American College of Cardiology Foundation and other societies on the update to the cardiac CT appropriate use criteria.
“The intent of these criteria is to guide the rational use of the procedure, namely avoidance of either under - or overutilization, and thereby lead to more optimal healthcare delivery and justifiable healthcare expenditures,” said Allen J. Taylor, M.D., chair of the writing committee and professor of medicine, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. “Performance and optimal use measures represent the new reality in healthcare and cardiovascular imaging, thus while not ‘guidelines’ per se, these criteria provide a pathway towards optimal utilization of imaging technology. I urge every imager and clinician who uses cardiac CT to not only become familiar with these criteria, but take a personal stake in locally implementing these criteria to the best of their ability.”
“The 2010 Appropriateness Criteria represent a major advance for the field of cardiac CT. The rapidly evolving science has led to significant increases in appropriate indications for cardiac CT, including calcium scoring and use in bypass patients, among many others,” said Matthew J. Budoff, M.D., FSCCT, professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, director of cardiac CT at Los Angeles Biomedical Research Center at Harbor UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, Calif., and president of the SCCT. “As clinicians and payers adopt these new criteria, we anticipate ever increasing interest in this important part of the clinicians imaging armamentarium. These new criteria establish a new level of acceptance for cardiac CT and should be met most favorably by both clinicians and payers.”
This report will be printed in its entirety in the November/December issue of the Journal of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography.
For more information: www.SCCT.org