Evaluation of the E test for antimicrobial susceptibility testing of Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates from patients with long-term bladder catheterization.

The E test was evaluated in comparison with reference agar methods (National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards) for the susceptibility testing of 248 Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates from bladder-catheterized patients against nine antibiotics. The E-test MICs correlated well with those determined by the agar dilution and disk diffusion reference methods (88 and 92.5% within 1 log2 dilution step, respectively), confirming that the E test is a reliable method for the determination of MICs of antibiotics for catheterization-associated P. aeruginosa isolates.