Validation of EUCAST rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing directly from positive blood cultures in a non-automated lab setting

Our results with reference strains show that reading RAST after 4 hours is frequently too soon to obtain clinical results, and that <i>Streptococcus pneumoniae</i> reference strain did yield readable inhibition zones in RAST when harvested from BioMérieux BACT/ALERT 3D® bottle cultures. In a wider panel of strains, Gram positives RAST results were very similar to standard AST, while with Gram negative species errors were more frequently observed, limiting clinical implementation.