Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing Protocols

The reported increase in the occurrence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria serves to emphasize the importance of accurate susceptibility testing.  This timely guide examines the role of the clinical microbiology lab in integrated patient care. The first section addresses basic susceptibility disciplines such as macro and microbroth dilution, agar dilution, and disk diffusion. The second section considers specialized susceptibility protocols that may be performed by a subset of labs, and emphasizes reproducible results. The third section covers antibiotic development and discusses antibiogram design and use. It includes extensive references and a table of antibiotic classes and common bug-drug susceptibilities.