EUCAST rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing (RAST) compared to conventional susceptibility testing: implementation and potential added value in a tertiary hospital in Belgium.

EUCAST breakpoints for short incubation disk diffusion allow rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing (RAST) directly from positive blood cultures. We evaluate the RAST methodology and assess its potential added value in a setting of low prevalence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) organisms. In our two-part study, we performed RAST on 127 clinical blood cultures at 6 and 8 h and determined categorical agreement with direct susceptibility testing. We also measure the impact of susceptibility results on antimicrobial therapy compared to empirical treatment. Categorical agreement was 96.2% at 6 h (575/598 isolate-drug combinations) and 96.6% at 8 h (568/588 combinations). Major errors involved piperacillin/tazobactam in 16 of 31 cases. The second part of our study shows that AST reporting proved essential in correcting ineffective empirical therapy in 6.3% of the patients (8/126). EUCAST RAST is an inexpensive and reliable method of susceptibility testing, although care must be taken with reporting piperacillin/tazobactam. In support of RAST implementation, we show that AST remains of great importance in providing effective therapy, even in a setting of low MDR prevalence and elaborate antibiotic guidelines.