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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, January 2001, p. 241-250, Vol. 39, No. 1
0095-1137/01/$04.00+0   DOI: 10.1128/JCM.39.1.241-250.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Ability of Laboratories To Detect Emerging Antimicrobial Resistance: Proficiency Testing and Quality Control Results from the World Health Organization's External Quality Assurance System for Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing

Fred C. Tenover,1,2 M. Jasmine Mohammed,1,2 John Stelling,3 Thomas O'Brien,4 and Rosamund Williams3,*

Hospital Infections Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,1 and World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Global Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring,2 Atlanta, Georgia 30333; World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland3; and World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 021154

Received 17 February 2000/Returned for modification 18 April 2000/Accepted 4 October 2000

The accuracy of antimicrobial susceptibility data submitted by microbiology laboratories to national and international surveillance systems has been debated for a number of years. To assess the accuracy of data submitted to the World Health Organization by users of the WHONET software, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention distributed six bacterial isolates representing key antimicrobial-resistance phenotypes to approximately 130 laboratories, all but one of which were outside of the United States, for antimicrobial susceptibility testing as part of the World Health Organization's External Quality Assurance System for Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing. Each laboratory also was asked to submit 10 consecutive quality control values for several key organism-drug combinations. Most laboratories were able to detect methicillin (oxacillin) resistance in Staphylococcus aureus, high-level vancomycin resistance in Enterococcus faecium, and resistance to extended-spectrum cephalosporins in Klebsiella pneumoniae. Many laboratories, particularly those using disk diffusion tests, had difficulty in recognizing reduced susceptibility to penicillin in an isolate of Streptococcus pneumoniae. The most difficult phenotype for laboratories to detect was reduced susceptibility to vancomycin in an isolate of Staphylococcus epidermidis. The proficiency testing challenge also included a request for biochemical identification of a gram-negative bacillus, which most laboratories recognized as Enterobacter cloacae. Although only a small subset of laboratories have submitted their quality control data, it is clear that many of these laboratories generate disk diffusion results for oxacillin when testing S. aureus ATCC 25923 and S. pneumoniae ATCC 49619 that are outside of the acceptable quality control range. The narrow quality control range for vancomycin also proved to be a challenge for many of the laboratories submitting data; approximately 27% of results were out of range. Thus, it is important to establish the proficiency of laboratories submitting data to surveillance systems in which the organisms are tested locally, particularly for penicillin resistance in pneumococci and glycopeptide resistance in staphylococci.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Nosocomial Pathogens Laboratory Branch (G-08), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road, NE, Atlanta, GA 30333. Phone: (404) 639-3246. Fax: (404) 639-1381. E-mail: fnt1{at}cdc.gov.

Journal of Clinical Microbiology, January 2001, p. 241-250, Vol. 39, No. 1
0095-1137/01/$04.00+0   DOI: 10.1128/JCM.39.1.241-250.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.


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Copyright © 2001 by the American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.