Background: The antimicrobial susceptibility test is one of the most important clinical test carried out in the microbiology laboratory. Due to the great number of antimicrobial agents and the complexity of resistance mechanisms evolved, it has become very difficult to detect problems in these tests by simply evaluating the results obtained. Consequently, a quality control program must be performed continuously. Objective: The objective of the present study was to evaluate the quality of the antimicrobial susceptibility disks used in Brazil. Methods: Eighteen antimicrobial susceptibility disks manufactured from five commercial trade marks were evaluated. These antimicrobial disks were tested against four ATCCs and following the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS) procedures for disk-diffusion. Each test was repeated 20 times. Results: None of the trade marks presented a satisfactory performance for routine use in a microbiology laboratory. The best performance was presented by Cecon®, with 89,6% of overall agreement. Sensifar® disks showed a similar overall concordance of 90,8%. The trade mark with the least adequate performance was Pimenta Abreu®, with only 58,6% overall agreement. Conclusion: The results from this study indicate that the disks commercialized in Brazil are inappropriate to be used in clinical microbiology laboratories showing lack of quality control during the process of production and/or storage. They also show the importance of the implementation of both external and internal quality control programs.
Disk-diffusion; Antimicrobial susceptibility test; Susceptibility disks; Quality control; ATCC strains
