European gonococcal antimicrobial surveillance programme external quality assessment scheme for neisseria gonorrhoeae antimicrobial susceptibility testing : 2015

External quality assessment (EQA) is an essential part of any laboratory-based surveillance system, allowing for the monitoring of performance and comparability of results from participating laboratories, identification of potential issues and deployment of resources and training where necessary. An EQA scheme for antimicrobial susceptibility testing in Neisseria gonorrhoeae has been available to laboratories participating in ECDC's European Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) surveillance network since 2010. This EQA scheme has shown overall high-levels of inter-laboratory comparability in the presence of differing methodologies. Problems identified in previous panel distributions included reduced comparability of discs compared to agar dilution and Etests, media not suitably supporting gonococcal growth, and the use of different manufacturers of gradient strips which are similar to E-tests.