Multicenter Evaluation of Ceftazidime-Avibactam Susceptibility Testing of Enterobacterales and Pseudomonas aeruginosa on the VITEK® 2 System.

In this multisite study, VITEK® 2 AST-Gram-Negative Ceftazidime-Avibactam (CZA) test results for 1073 isolates (866 Enterobacterales and 207 Pseudomonas aeruginosa) were compared to the Clinical & Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) broth microdilution (BMD) reference method. The results were analyzed for essential agreement (EA), category agreement (CA), major error rates, and very major error rates following FDA/ISO performance criteria using the FDA-recognized CLSI/EUCAST breakpoints (S ≤8/4 μg/ml and R ≥16/4 μg/ml). The overall EA was 94.5% (1014/1073) and CA was 98.7% (1059/1073). No very major errors were reported. The major error rate was 1.4% (14/998). Out of 14 major errors, 9 were within EA. Based on the EA and lack of an intermediate category for CZA, the adjusted major error rate for FDA criteria was 0.5% (5/998). The performance for ISO criteria after error resolutions included EA 94.5% (1014/1073), CA 98.9% (1061/1073), major error 1.2% (12/998), and no very major error. Vitek 2 met the ISO and FDA criteria of ≥95% reproducibility and ≥95% quality control (QC) results within acceptable ranges for QC organisms. Vitek 2 overall performance for Enterobacterales and P. aeruginosa met or exceeded the FDA and ISO performance criteria and thus is a reliable alternative to BMD reference method for routine CZA susceptibility testing.