Critical Assessment of Issues Applicable to Development of Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing Breakpoints

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) interpretive crite-ria (breakpoints and cutoffs) serve to translate numerical data (zones of inhibition and MIC values) into textual categories that provide direction to clinicians as to whether a microbial isolate is likely to respond to a given antibiotic when adminis-tered at the recommended dosing for the site of infection. Historically, the Subcommittee for Antimicrobial Suscepti-bility Testing (SAST) of the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) (previously the National Committee for Clin-ical Laboratory Standards [NCCLS]) has been instrumental in the generation of such breakpoints, while addressing its pri-mary charge of developing and updating methods for the ac-curate in vitro determination of antimicrobial susceptibility and resistance. The CLSI describes itself as an international, inter-disciplinary, nonprofit, standards-developing and educational