As the clinical breakpoints specified in the EUCAST and CLSI guidelines for antimicrobial susceptibility testing are not yet in an electronically consumable format, it can be a very lengthy and error prone process to provision them in a LIMS both during initial implementation and when they are updated, typically on an annual basis. To address this problem, we have now created fully importable instances of these breakpoint tables, specifically for EUCAST version 13.0, CLSI M100 version 32, M45 (infrequently isolated or fastidious bacteria) version 3 and M60 (yeasts) version 2. At implementation time, we can preload a system with all EUCAST and/or CLSI breakpoints, depending on need. If you use one set of guidelines only (EUCAST or CLSI), we would preload and enable all breakpoints for that standard. However, if you use a combination, we would preload the superset and let you determine which breakpoints from each guideline should be enabled in your system.
Furthermore, as the breakpoints in these guidelines change with the release of new versions, we will update the importable set so you don't have to. The latest versions will always be available for you to incorporate at a time of your choosing and we will provide notifications on the website whenever new versions from either organisation have been incorporated.
Finally, as this question often comes up, when breakpoints are updated in the system, the new susceptibility criteria will only be applied to new tests. Archived susceptibility results that were determined from previous versions of the guidelines would not be altered.
Article first published: 31/01/23