[Overview of History and New Demands Regarding Clinical Microbiological Tests in Healthcare Facilities]

Since the 1960s, healthcare-associated infections caused by multi-drug-resistant organisms (MDROs) have been a critical part of hospital quality management. To fight MDROs, diverse antimicrobial agents are developed and used for patients. Recently, super-MDROs such as carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae (CPE) are spreading throughout the world. There is a chance that such super-MDROs will appear in Japan. For active surveillance (i.e., screening) tests to detect CPE, state-of-the-art methodologies are needed. For example, selective culture media and active surveillance test by real-time PCR, matrix-assisted laser desorption-ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) technology for bacterial identification, and molecular epidemiological tools such as multi-locus sequence typing (MLST). In this symposium, we discussed updating to state-of-the-art clinical microbiologic technologies in Japanese clinical microbiologic laboratories.