[The quantitative expression of susceptibility and its clinical significance]

As for the methods for dilution antimicrobial susceptibility tests, the results are expressed quantitatively as minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). MICs are useful index not only for the choice of antibiotics to the treatment of infectious diseases but the exact detection of resistant strains. Recently, the study for the mechanism of the bacterial resistance to antibiotics were made remarkable progress, the important point of MICs in the combination of species and antibiotics were become clear. To improve the quality of the susceptibility tests, it is necessary to come into wide use of the dilution antimicrobial susceptibility tests instead of the disk susceptibility tests which are popular in JAPAN.