QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF MICROBE BASE ANTIMICROBIAL SUSCEPTIBILITY DATA

Aims-To assess the quality of centres contributing antimicrobial susce ptibility data to a centralised database. Methods-Twelve organisms wer e distributed to 31 regional microbiology laboratories contributing da ta to a centralised susceptibility database. Participants were asked t o determine susceptibilities to certain antibiotics by their routine m ethod and return the data to the Department of Microbiology, Royal Hal lamshire Hospital, Sheffield, for analysis. Results-Results for the ov erwhelming majority of organism/antibiotic combinations were in agreem ent with expected results. Reasons for discrepancies included suscepti bilities, the use of different content discs, and, more importantly, m inimum inhibitory concentrations falling close to breakpoint values. C onclusions-It is inevitable that any large multicentre database will c ontain a degree of inaccurate data. This study has highlighted several areas where discrepant results have occurred and has enabled Glare La boratories to approach individual laboratories to address this problem . This study emphasises the value and consistency of Microbe Base as t he largest database, of its kind, nationally.