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.

中文翻译：

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兽医临床医生使用 Flexicult Vet 进行尿液细菌识别和抗菌药物敏感性测试的准确性如何？

抗生素经常用于治疗狗和猫的尿路感染 (UTI)。UTI 通常需要耗时且昂贵的抗菌药物敏感性测试 (AST)。或者，临床医生可以使用 Flexicult Vet，这是一种经济实惠的显色琼脂，其中添加了用于临床 AST 的抗生素。我们调查了兽医微生物学家和临床医生如何在没有任何经验的情况下使用 Flexicult Vet 对最常见的犬和猫泌尿系统致病菌进行鉴定和 AST。我们准备了 47 个含有 10 种细菌的单一培养板。该测试的细菌识别平均准确度为 75.1%（微生物学家和临床医生分别为 84.6% 和 68.7%），AST 的平均准确率为 79.2%（80.7% 和 78.2%）。大肠杆菌（红色）、粪肠球菌（绿松石色）和变形杆菌属。（浅棕色）。然而，评估人员的经验证明在识别浅色细菌如假中间葡萄球菌（准确率分别为 82.6% 和 40.3%）方面很重要。由于无法考虑细菌的内在耐药性，因此对屎肠球菌的错误识别进一步恶化了 AST 性能。最后，只有 33.3% (3/9) 的耐甲氧西林假中间链球菌(MRSP) 被正确检测到。总而言之，Flexicult Vet 证明对某些尿路病原体是可靠的。相比之下，浅色细菌（例如葡萄球菌），经常被错误识别，需要标准的 AST。