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The Kirby-Bauer Technique in Clinical Medicine and Its Application to Carbenicillin

1973; Oxford University Press; Volume: 127; Issue: Supplement 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/infdis/127.supplement_2.s111

1537-6613

Fritz D. Schoenknecht,

Mycobacterium research and diagnosis

The Kirby-Bauer technique is a carefully standardized single-disk-diffusion test of susceptibility to antibiotics. Interpretative categories have been developed from a synthesis of zone size with MIC-blood level, or in some cases, correlations with urinary levels, susceptibility distribution of bacterial populations, and clinical experience. Carbenicillin has a low level of toxicity permitting high blood levels and a wide range of therapeutic activity; this necessitates different breakpoints for Pseudomonas and other organisms such as indole-positive Proteus for which different dose schedules are used. Preparations of oral carbenicillin which give low blood levels, should be tested in the same way as nalidixic acid or nitrofurantoin with breakpoints applicable for concentrations in the urinary tract. Faulty execution of the test probably accounts for the fact that of 140 Pseudomonas strains submitted to our laboratory as resistant to carbenicillin by existing criteria, only 36% were not susceptible when retested by the properly executed method.