In 2014 and 2017, the European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (EUCAST) evaluated the quality of 16 antimicrobial susceptibility test (AST) discs from nine manufacturers against EUCAST targets and ranges for relevant quality control strains. The 16 AST discs were selected to represent different antibiotic classes and to include screening discs for important resistance mechanisms.
The first study took place in 2014, on in-house prepared Mueller Hinton plates using MH agar from two manufacturers. In 2017 EUCAST again invited manufacturers to participate in a repeat of these studies. The report highlighted that during 2014–2017 Mast Group maintained a high level of consistency of well-calibrated discs in both quality and performance throughout all studies.
A recently published paper by EUCAST (Ahman J, Matuscheck E, Kahlmeter G. The quality of antimicrobial disks from nine manufacturers – EUCAST evaluations in 2014 and 2017. Clin Microbiol Infect Jun 7. pii: S1198-743X(18)30456-7. doi: 10.1016/j.cmi.2018.05.021 [Epub ahead of print]) continues this theme, and states that Mast Group discs were found to “demonstrate excellent and consistent quality in both the 2014 and 2017 study”.
MASTDISCS AST produced results 100% within the ranges set out by EUCAST, and MASTDISCS reproducibility continues to be of a high standard for all QC combinations.