We evaluated the performance of microbiology laboratories in the 10th run of the external quality assessment scheme (EQAS) in Tehran and districts. Each laboratory was sent 2 species of bacteria for identification. Of the 487 laboratories that participated, 437 returned their findings. While 77.0% and 69.9% correctly identified Staphylococcus saprophyticus and Citrobacter freundii respectively,...

Nalidixic acid (nal) susceptibility of clinical isolates of Serratia marcescens from urinary tract infections, wounds, and blood was determined by the standard disk method, and results were compared with results obtained by a standardized tube dilution procedure using five different broth media. An attempt was made to approximate in vivo conditions by using urine as a test medium and correlatin...

Standardization of a fragmented dermatophyte mycelial inoculum free of conidia for use in a broth microculture antimycotic susceptibility testing system is described. Ten clinical dermatophyte isolates were grown in submerged broth cultures at 35 degrees C. The mycelia were harvested before conidia appeared and were fragmented to 10 to 50-micron segments with a Broeck ground-glass tissue grinde...

BACKGROUND In March 2012, the Xpert MTB/RIF assay (Xpert) was introduced in three provincial public hospitals in Indonesia as a novel diagnostic to detect tuberculosis and rifampicin resistance among high risk individuals. OBJECTIVE This study assessed the effects of using Xpert in place of conventional solid and liquid culture and drug-susceptibility testing on case detection rates, treatmen...

This article highlights key amendments incorporated into version 11 of the BSAC standardized disc susceptibility testing method, available as Supplementary data at JAC Online (http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/) and on the BSAC web site (http://bsac.org.uk/susceptibility/guidelines-standardized-disc-susceptibility-testing-method/). The basic disc susceptibility testing method remains unchanged, but...

As more drugs for treating HIV have become available, drug resistance profiles within antiretroviral drug classes have become increasingly important for researchers developing new drugs and for clinicians integrating new drugs into their clinical practice. In vitro passage experiments and comprehensive phenotypic susceptibility testing are used for the pre-clinical evaluation of drug resistance...

Urine is one of the most common specimen types submitted to the clinical microbiology laboratory; the use of chromogenic agar is one method by which the laboratory might expedite culture results and reduce hands-on time and materials required for urine culture analysis. The objective of our study was to compare chromID CPS Elite (bioMérieux), a chromogenic medium, to conventional primary cultur...

Briefly incubated agar cultures from positive blood cultures were used for antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) by Vitek 2. The cultivation time until inoculation was 3.8 h for Gram-positive cocci and 2.4 h for Gram-negative rods. The error rates were low, providing early and reliable AST without additional time or cost expenditure.

An international collaborative study on serotyping and antimicrobial susceptibility testing of eight Salmonella enterica strains was performed to enhance the capacity of national and regional reference laboratories in WHO Global Salm-Surv to conduct Salmonella serotyping and antimicrobial susceptibility testing. A total of 103 laboratories in 60 countries participated. For serotyping, 78% of th...