Comparison of Four Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing Methods To Determine the In Vitro Activities of Piperacillin and Piperacillin-Tazobactam against Clinical Isolates of Enterobacteriaceae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Susceptibility to piperacillin was similar to that to piperacillin-tazobactam (<1% difference) for 6,938 isolates of Enterobacter aerogenes and 13,954 isolates of Enterobacter cloacae tested using a Vitek system; for the same species, in contrast, susceptibility rates to piperacillin-tazobactam were 5.9 to 13.9% higher than to piperacillin using disk diffusion, MicroScan, and Vitek 2 testing. Unprecedented phenotypes (piperacillin susceptible and piperacillin-tazobactam intermediate; piperacillin intermediate and piperacillin-tazobactam resistant; piperacillin susceptible and piperacillin-tazobactam resistant) accounted for 6.1% of the results for E. aerogenes isolates and 6.0% of the results for E. cloacae isolates tested with the Vitek system.