European harmonization of MIC breakpoints for antimicrobial susceptibility testing of bacteria

The success or failure of antimicrobial therapy in bacterial and fungal infections is predicted ideally by antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST), in which microorganisms are divided into treatable and non-treatable categories on the basis of MIC breakpoints. In Europe, the categorization was traditionally a clinical one and it was made irre-spective of whether or not the organism harboured resistance mechanisms. MIC breakpoints generally divide bacteria into three