Quality control

Routine quality control is a requirement for maintaining quality of susceptibility testing.

 

For information regarding quality control of EUCAST's disk diffusion method, see slide show, EUCAST Disk Diffusion Test Manual and current QC tables at the EUCAST homepage.

 

For NordicAST recommendations for quality control of gradient tests, see Method document “Nordic Ast Recommendations For Quality Control Of Gradient Tests”. 

Reference histograms

In addition to routine quality controls with QC strains, an individual lab can also compare its inhibition zone and MIC distributions with reference histograms on the EUCAST website.

 

Reporting to UKNEQAS

NordicAST's breakpoint tables are based on the EUCAST breakpoint table, but have comments that are adapted to Scandinavian conditions.

We therefore encourage all laboratories using EUCAST's disk diffusion method in combination with NordicAST's breakpoint tables to report EUCAST as a guideline when reporting quality issues to UK NEQAS. The same applies to those laboratories that use automated systems and interpret the results according to NordicAST's breakpoint tables.