TABLE 1.

Key recommendations for routine antibiogram development

Recommendation
Antibiogram reports should be analyzed and presented at least annually.
Only diagnostic (not surveillance) isolates should be included.
Only final, verified test results should be included.
Duplicates should be eliminated by including only the first isolate of a species, patient, and/or analysis period, regardless of specimen source or antimicrobial susceptibility profile.
Only species with testing data for ≥30 isolates should be included.
Only antimicrobial agents routinely tested against the population of isolates to be analyzed should be included, and the %S should be calculated from results reported as well as those that may be suppressed on patient reports for which selective or cascade reporting rules have been applied.
To decrease biases in susceptibility estimates, laboratorians should refrain from including results for supplemental antimicrobial agents selectively tested on resistant isolates only.
Laboratorians should report the %S but exclude the %I and %SDD in the %S statistic.