How accurate are veterinary clinicians employing flexicult vet for identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing of urinary bacteria

Cugmas, Blaž (author), Avberšek, Miha (author), Rosa, Teja (author), Godec, Leonida (author), Struc, Eva (author), Golob, Majda (author), Zdovc, Irena (author)

Abstract Antibiotics are frequently used for treating urinary tract infections (UTI) in dogs and cats. UTI often requires time-consuming and expensive antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST). Alternatively, clinicians can employ Flexicult Vet, an affordable chromogenic agar with added antibiotics for in-clinic AST. We investigated how well veterinary microbiologists and clinicians, without any prior experience, employ Flexicult Vet for the identification and AST of the most common canine and feline urinary pathogenic bacteria. We prepared 47 monoculture plates containing 10 bacterial species. The test’s mean accuracy was 75.1% for bacteria identification (84.6% and 68.7% for microbiologists and clinicians, respectively) and 79.2% for AST (80.7% and 78.2%). All evaluators employed Flexicult Vet with the accuracies over 90% for the distinctively colored bacteria like Escherichia coli (red), Enterococcus faecalis (turquoise), and Proteus spp. (pale brown). However, the evaluators’ experience proved important in recognizing lightly colored bacteria like Staphylococcus pseudintermedius (accuracies of 82.6% and 40.3%). Misidentifications of E. faecium additionally worsened AST performance since bacterial intrinsic resistance could not be considered. Finally, only 33.3% (3/9) of methicillin-resistant S. pseudintermedius (MRSP) were correctly detected. To conclude, Flexicult Vet proved reliable for certain urinary pathogens. In contrast, light-colored bacteria (e.g., Staphylococcus), often misidentified, require a standard AST

• Language: English
• Keywords: urinary tract infection, Flexicult Vet, antimicrobial susceptibility testing, pathogen identification, dogs, cats, veterinary microbiology
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FFA - Faculty of Pharmacy; VF - Veterinary Faculty
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Publication date: 24.09.2021
• Year: 2021
• Number of pages: 10 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 10, no. 10, art. 1160
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-132184
• UDC: 636.8.09:579:57.08
• ISSN on article: 2079-6382
• DOI: 10.3390/antibiotics10101160
• COBISS.SI-ID: 78002435
• Publication date in RUL: 15.10.2021

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Antibiotics
• Shortened title: Antibiotics
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 2079-6382
• COBISS.SI-ID: 522975769

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.
• Licensing start date: 24.09.2021

Projects

• Funder: ARRS - Slovenian Research Agency
• Funding programme: Slovenian Ministry of Economic Development and Technology

• Funder: EC - European Commission
• Funding programme: European Regional Development Fund
• Project number: Eureka E! 13509