Unreliability of direct antibiotic susceptibility testing on wound exudates.

Direct susceptibility testing was performed on 110 specimens of wound exudates. Growth was inadequate in 76 of these specimens. Of the remaining 34 specimens, only 5 produced results corresponding to those obtained by testing individual bacterial isolates by the Kirby-Bauer technique. This study confirms that direct susceptibility testing of wound exudates may provide misleading and clinically unreliable information on more than 95% of specimens.