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CLSI Susceptibility Testing Subcommittees and Resources

Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (AST) Subcommittee | Bacteria-focused

The AST Subcommittee provides useful information to laboratories, enabling them to advise clinicians in the selection of appropriate antimicrobial therapy.

Volunteers for the AST Subcommittee come from microbiology laboratories, government agencies, and pharmaceutical and diagnostic microbiology industries. Together, they focus on the following key elements:

  • Developing standard reference methods for antimicrobial susceptibility tests
  • Providing quality control parameters for standard test methods
  • Establishing interpretive criteria for results of standard antimicrobial susceptibility tests
  • Providing suggestions for testing and reporting strategies that are clinically relevant and cost-effective
  • Continually refining standards and guidelines, thereby optimizing the detection of emerging resistance
  • Educating users through multimedia communication of standards and guidelines
  • Fostering a dialogue with users of these methods and those who apply them

As a result, the interests of the professions, government, and industry remain balanced and aimed at a single common interest—quality medical testing.

Subcommittee and Working Groups

AST SC Structure

* An Ad hoc Working Group is under one of the 6 Standing WGs. Ad hoc WGs usually have an assignment that is limited in scope and is disbanded upon completion of the assignment.

Meeting Files and Resources

Additional Resources:

  • RangeFinder— Microsoft Excel spreadsheet calculators that have the capacity to provide first estimates of quality control ranges for studies that have followed the CLSI M23 standard to establishing ranges.
  • ECOFFinder — Microsoft Excel spreadsheet calculator designed to estimate epidemiological cutoff values (ECVs, ECOFFs) for the minimal inhibitory concentrations or minimal effective concentrations of wild-type bacterial or fungal populations.
  • M100 Archive Table — PDF document of breakpoints eliminated from CLSI document M100 since 2010.
  • Disclosure of Interest
  • AST IQCP Materials
  • IQCP for Disk Diffusion AST