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.