Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio San Antonio, Texas, United States
Disclosure(s):
Nathan Wiederhold, Pharm.D.: No relevant disclosure to display
Presentation Description / Summary: Susceptibility testing may be used to obtain information regarding the activity of different antimicrobials, including antifungals, against pathogens that have been cultured from patients with different types of infections. These results may then be used to make decisions regarding treatment regimens. These results are most useful when interpretive criteria (i.e., breakpoints) are available. However, for many fungal species that are capable of causing invasive disease, clinical breakpoints have not been established. Thus, interpretations of susceptible or resistant cannot be provided by clinical laboratories, and this is especially true for many molds capable of causing severe mycoses. The purpose of this presentation is to provide an overview of antifungal susceptibility testing for clinicians, including the methods used to perform these assays, their limitations, how clinical breakpoints are established, and how the results may be put into context in the absence of interpretive criteria.
Learner Outcomes: 1) Understand how antifungal susceptibility is performed 2) Review how breakpoints are established and the types of information that are used in these decisions 3) Describe how to make sense of antifungal susceptibility results in the absence of interpretive breakpoints
Learning Objectives:
Understand how antifungal susceptibility is performed
Discuss how breakpoints are established and the types of information that are used in these decisions
Describe how to make sense of antifungal susceptibility results in the absence of interpretive breakpoints
