ABSTRACT
The determination of the antibiotic susceptibility of clinically important anaerobes is the subject of major consideration at this time, because of the increasing frequency of isolation of anaerobes from clinical specimens and the lack of agreement and standardization of the antibiotic test procedure for anaerobes. The broth dilution tests involve the preparation of suitable dilutions of antibiotics in reduced media to yield the desired concentrations of antibiotic and inoculation of the series of antibiotic-containing broths and their control with a suitable concentration of the test anaerobe. The broth dilution method is recommended for small laboratories performing a few anaerobic susceptibility tests at a time. There are several agar dilution tests of varying degrees of complexity. The principle of all of these tests is similar and involves making suitable dilutions of each antibiotic to be tested and adding the antibiotic to the agar to give the desired concentration of antibiotic.
