BSAC standardized disc susceptibility testing method (version 8).

There have been considerable changes to the format of the recommendations since the previous version (version 7). The majority of the footnotes to the tables have been removed and the notations added to the end column; it is hoped that this change will avoid confusion in interpretation. Antibiotics have been separated into groups, e.g. beta-lactams, aminoglycosides, etc. Recommendations for urinary tract infections (UTIs) have been removed for most agents except for those that are administered solely for the treatment of uncomplicated UTIs or where there are limited recommendations for specific organisms, e.g. trimethoprim. For agents that previously had dual recommendations, systemic recommendations remain and the intermediate category can be used for interpretation for UTIs because intermediate susceptibility infers that the infection may respond as the agent is concentrated at the site of infection. This change will also avoid errors in interpretation when an organism is isolated from multiple sites, e.g. blood and urine. The changes that have been made to version 7 are as follows: MIC and zone diameter breakpoints (BPs) for trimethoprim, fosfomycin and nitrofurantoin for UTIs (Table 7); MIC and zone diameter breakpoints (BPs) for doripenem (Tables 7-9); colistin MIC BPs for Pseudomonas spp. (Table 9), co-trimoxazole MIC BPs for Stenotrophomonas maltophilia (Table 10); staphylococci MIC and zone diameter BPs for clarithromycin, clindamycin, erythromycin, quinupristin/dalfopristin, trimethoprim UTI, nitrofurantoin UTI and rifampicin (Table 11); Streptococcus pneumoniae MIC and zone diameter BPs for azithromycin, clarithromycin, erythromycin, co-trimoxazole, linezolid, rifampicin and telithromycin (Table 12); addition of streptomycin recommendations for enterococci (Table 13); enterococcal MIC and zone diameter BPs for quinupristin/dalfopristin, nitrofurantoin UTI and trimethoprim UTI (Table 13); beta-haemolytic streptococci MIC and zone diameter BPs for azithromycin, clarithromycin, erythromycin and telithromycin (Table 15); clarithromycin and erythromycin MIC and zone diameter BPs for Moraxella catarrhalis (Table 16); azithromycin MIC BPs for Neisseria gonorrhoeae (Table 17); chloramphenicol and rifampicin MIC BPs for Neisseria meningitidis (Table 18); azithromycin MIC BPs for Haemophilus influenzae (Table 19); MIC BPs for metronidazole for Bacteroides fragilis, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron and Clostridium perfringens (Tables 23-25, respectively); susceptibility testing of Listeria spp. (Appendix 3); the acceptable range for ATCC 25923 to a 10 microg tobramycin disc (Table 26).