Bacteriological proficiency testing in Hungarian clinical microbiology laboratories.

In course of a proficiency testing programme carried out in 1989, a total of 47 clinical microbiology laboratories of public health stations and of hospitals received freeze-dried cultures for isolation, identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing. The specimens contained bacteria that occur in everyday work, including those that require improved methods of cultivation and identification. Nine public health laboratories and one hospital laboratory achieved excellent results. Good results were attained by 11 public health and 6 hospital laboratories. Four public health and 10 hospital laboratories were on the medium level and 4 hospital laboratories did not reach even this degree. The main failures were due to an insufficient anaerobic cultivation, unreliable identification and negligation of controls for drug susceptibility tests.