External quality assessment of laboratory performance – European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Network (EARS-Net), 2018

This report provides an analysis of the external quality assessment (EQA) performance with antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) of laboratories participating in the European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Network in 2018. A total of 860 laboratories (1 – 114 per country) from 30 EU/EEA countries participated in the EQA exercise. Six bacterial strains were used: Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus faecium and Streptococcus pneumoniae.