Quality Control Monitoring of Medical Diagnostic X-Ray Units in Southern Tanzania

Introduction: The study focused on the assessment of quality control tests in X-ray units from the southern regions of Tanzania to yield the data required to create and implement quality control policies and strategies. Material and Methods: Quality control tests were conducted on twenty-six diagnostic X-ray units in private and government hospitals in the southern regions of Tanzania during 2020 – 2021. The tests focused on the reproducibility of accelerating tube potential, time reproducibility, the accuracy of accelerating tube potential, half-value layer, beam alignment, and collimation. The statistical analyses were done using the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet of 2013. The results were compared with the tolerance limits. Results: Of all X-ray units evaluated, 92.31% had kVp accuracy within the tolerance limit of 5% and 92% of the X-ray units had acceptable HVL values ≥ 2.3 mm Al at 80 kVp. Moreover, results have shown that 86.96% and 82.61% of X-ray units had acceptable beam collimation (≤ ±2 cm) and beam alignment (≤3% of the X-ray source and X-ray table), respectively. Conclusion: Comprehensive regulatory inspections and equipment maintenance plans in southern Tanzania are significantly required due to the high patient workload which attributes to frequent breakdowns of X-ray units. Moreover, radiographers need to be trained on how to minimize and detect beam misalignment and collimation failure since the most unacceptable results were observed from these tests.