The American College of Radiology (ACR) announced this week its government relations staff has been engaging federal agencies in an effort to improve product availability and hasten resolution of the ongoing iodine contrast shortage.

Alan Matsumoto, MD, chair of the department of radiology at the University of Virginia and vice chair of the ACR Board of Chancellors, explains how the ACR and group purchasing organizations are asking the FDA to mitigate the contrast shortage with an emergency use authorization to allow non-FDA cleared iodine contrast agents to be imported.

Eric Williamson, MD, president of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT) and professor of radiology at Mayo Clinic, explains how the iodine contrast shortage is causing issues for cardiac CT imaging and ways this can be mitigated.

Gadolinium might be an alternative, stop-gap solution for interventional procedures during the current iodine contrast shortage.

Alan H. Matsumoto, MD, chair of the department of radiology at the University of Virginia and vice chair of the American College of Radiology Board of Chancellors, explains the contrast shortage situation and the tough decisions providers are being forced to make.

Alan H. Matsumoto, MD, chair of the department of radiology at the University of Virginia, vice chair of the American College of Radiology (ACR) Board of Chancellors, and chairman of the ACR Commission on Interventional and Cardiovascular Radiology, explains that the iodine contrast shortage has led to use of MRI gadolinium contrast agents in some cases.

Kirk Garratt, MD, medical director of the Center for Heart and Vascular Health, ChristianaCare, and a past president of SCAI, explains what this shortage means for interventional cardiologists.

“We need to commit to changing the supply chain so that a single event in a faraway country does not put us in this predicament again," experts wrote in a new special report shared by Radiology.

Researchers at a quaternary academic medical center have developed a short-term workaround that they report is now reducing the institution’s consumption of Omnipaque (iohexol) by more than 50% without compromising care quality.

The COVID lockdowns at the Shanghai plant began on March 31, and although the plant there has since resumed operations, they are not yet at 100% capacity.

The American Hospital Association is asking GE Healthcare to more fully apprise AHA’s nearly 5,000 member organizations of what the company is doing to help ameliorate the ongoing disruption in supplies of Omnipaque (iohexol).

With the shortage, which pertains specifically to all formulations and concentrations of GE Healthcare’s Omnipaque (iohexol), expected to last until mid-June, several organizations have alluded that conservation efforts are of critical importance.

U.S. healthcare is now a solid week into the CT contrast shortage of ’22, and common themes are emerging in adaptations at local hospitals and imaging centers.