Antifungal susceptibility testing. Recent findings and experience

The current status of antifungal susceptibility tests is very much in flux. There is ample evidence that current testing of fungi is at this point poorly standardized, and therefore the results from such tests are difficult to apply to patient management. On the other hand, there is now considerable interest in collaborative efforts to change this situation and all evidence to date indicates that standardization is a reasonable and clearly achievable goal. In the NCCLS Subcommittee Report, ²⁹ several steps were proposed to reach that objective. Among others, they include: 1) Establishing a panel of fungal isolates to be used in further studies; 2) Establish performance standards for a single media that might be used to test all known classes of antifungal agents; and 3) Determine and correct the sources of error that result in variability of the broth dilution method. Now that the problem has been more sharply defined, work to eliminate interlaboratory variability and to determine test correlation with treatment results should proceed. Hopefully work during the next few years will result in antifungal tests that are just as useful as today's tests for antibacterial agents.