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This book presents the patient management challenges that rural health centers face, and establishes the criteria for the type of medical imaging services that should be available in such facilities. To make the work of the center´s health practitioners more effective and efficient, the book assesses what health conditions may require medical attention in those centers. Information is provided on how to use basic imaging modalities, such as radiography and ultrasound, emphasizing the need for thoughtful service planning, careful equipment and imaging protocol selection, continuous staff training, and the implementation of quality control programs. The book is also a valuable resource for those physicians, medical physicists and service engineers who provide virtual and physical consultations to meet these needs.

Rural health centers are established to prevent patients from being forced to travel to distant urban medical facilities. To manage patients properly, rural health centers should be part of regional and more complete systems of medical health care installations in the country on the basis of a referral and counter-referral program. Thus, the centers should have the infrastructure needed to transport patients to urban hospitals when they need more complex health care. The coordination of all the activities is possible only if rural health centers are led by strong and dedicated managers.

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Part I Medical and Public Health Needs of a Rural Health Center.- Characteristics of a rural health center.- Medical imaging needs in a rural health center from a clinical point of view.- Part II: Medical Imaging Modalities.- Medical imaging equipment characteristics at the health center level: Overview.- Technical specifications.- Ultrasound units.- X-ray units Planar Radiography.- Part III: Planning a Medical Imaging Service.- Physical infrastructure and procurement issues.- Basic training and continuing education of technical staff in rural health centers - a personal view.- Teleradiology and networking.- Part IV: Operational Considerations.- Quality control, radiation protection and maintenance programs.- Patient referral to secondary and tertiary health care.- Recommendations.- Annex.- Appendices: Practical cases.

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Caridad (Cari) Borrás, D.Sc., DABR, DABMP, FACR, FAAPM, FIOMP, a Spanish national, went, as a Fulbright scholar, to the USA, where she worked as a radiological physicist in Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington DC. There, she managed for 15 years the radiological health program of the Pan American Health Organization/ World Health Organization and then, for 2 years, went to Recife, Brazil, as a Visiting Professor of the Federal University of Pernambuco. She chaired for nine years the Science Committee of the International Organization for Medical Physics and, for six, co-chaired/chaired the Health Technology Task Group of the IUPESM. For her scientific, educational and professional contributions to medical physics, she has been given awards by the IUPESM, the Spanish (SEFM), American (AAPM), Latin American (ALFIM) and International (IOMP) medical physics societies, by the American Board of Radiology and by the American College of Clinical Engineering.

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