ETEST® Ceftolozane/ Tazobactam

Multi-drug Resistant Organisms (MDRO) are a serious and growing healthcare threat. Ensuring that patients get the right antimicrobial, in the right dose, at the right time is at the heart of antimicrobial stewardship. This helps improve patient outcomes, prevents the development of resistance, and preserves the effectiveness of new therapeutic molecules. Vigilant and accurate antimicrobial susceptibility testing is a critical part of fighting resistance.

ETEST C/T (0.016-256 µg/mL) strips are easy-to-use and provide a wealth of information to clinicians. ETEST generates MIC values from a continuous scale and can give results between conventional two-fold dilutions, i.e., half dilutions. This means that, unlike diffusion methods, they can provide exact MIC breakpoints as well as the interpretive category (S, I, R). Not only do you know if an organism is susceptible, but you know with great precision how susceptible – information that can help best guide antibiotic therapy to fight the infection while reducing the risk of development of drug-resistant bacteria. Precise MIC values also enable epidemiological tracking of evolution of infectious organisms, to detect emergence of resistance over time.

The thin, inert and non-porous plastic ETEST C/T (0.016-256 µg/mL) strips have the MIC reading scale in μg/mL on one side and a predefined antibiotic gradient on the other. After applying a strip to an inoculated agar surface, the antibiotic gradient transfers into the agar and will form a stable, continuous and exponential gradient of antibiotic concentration is formed directly under the strip. After incubation, whereby bacterial growth becomes visible, a symmetrical inhibition ellipse centered along the strip is seen. With as little as 16 hours incubation, you can read the MIC value on the scale, with complete inhibition seen where the pointed end of the ellipse intersects the strip. It’s that simple.

Zerbaxa®,† a combination of ceftolozane and tazobactam, is used for Enterobacteriaceaeand Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections.  It is indicated for the treatment of adult patients with complicated urinary tract infections (cUTI) including acute pyelonephritis, and in combination with metronidazole, complicated intraabdominal infections (cIAI).

ETEST C/T (0.016-256 µg/mL) strips offer an easy and reliable method to determine exact MIC values. Susceptibility testing to Ceftolozane and Tazobactam help ensure optimal treatment and follow-up.