2015/12/22 by Reischl, Udo, Schneider, Wulf, Ehrenschwender, Martin +12
#610 Medical sciences #Medicine
paper · doi:10.3205/lab000020
This contribution provides a report on the recent proficiency testing scheme “Bacterial and Fungal Genome Detection (PCR/NAT)”. It summarizes some benchmarks and the overall assessment of results reported by all of the participating laboratories. This highly requested scheme for external quality assessment (EQAS) of molecular diagnostic methods in the field of medical microbiology was launched in 2002 by the German Society of Hygiene and Microbiology (DGHM) and is now organized by INSTAND e.V., Düsseldorf, Germany. This segment of the INSTAND e.V. proficiency testing program is open for diagnostic laboratories worldwide. The concept of this EQAS scheme, which is in accordance to the ”Directive of the German Medical Association for quality assurance of medical laboratory examinations“ (RiLiBÄK), part B3, is based on two validation rounds per year (spring and autumn) and a permanently expanding coverage of relevant bacterial or fungal pathogens. Briefly, next to “simply negative” samples the corresponding sets of quality control (QC) specimens may contain some strong-positive samples, samples spiked with clinical variants or species closely related to the target organisms. Further information as well as the statistically documented and discussed results of the past rounds of this proficiency testing scheme “Bacterial and Fungal Genome Detection (PCR/NAT)” can be found at the homepage of INSTAND e.V. ([link:http://www.instandev.de*http://www.instandev.de]). Although the preferred language of these documents is German, we are aiming to provide at least a brief discussion of the results and some key issues in English and keep the tables in a bilingual version.