Development of a national EUCAST challenge panel for antimicrobial susceptibility testing.

A challenge panel of bacterial strains useful for clinical laboratories to validate their European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (EUCAST) antimicrobial susceptibility test (AST) system was established. A total of 117 strains, obtained from Belgian Reference Centres (n = 57) and from routine clinical samples (n = 60) was selected based on resistance pattern. These strains were analysed in seven different laboratories by three different automated AST systems (Vitek (n = 2), Phoenix (n = 2) and Microscan (n = 2)) and by disc diffusion from five different manufacturers (Rosco (n = 2), Becton-Dickinson (n = 2), Biomérieux (n = 1), Bio-rad (n = 1) and i2a (n = 1)).