Question

When a physician sends a clinical sample to the lab and asks for antibiotic susceptibility to be determined, the lab technician determines the susceptibility by _____________________.

Answer 1

The lab technician determines the susceptibility of a clinical sample to antibiotics by performing antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST). The Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion test is a common method of AST, where the presence of a clear circular zone of inhibition around an antibiotic disk indicates susceptibility to that antibiotic.

Step-by-step explanation:

The lab technician determines the susceptibility of a clinical sample to antibiotics by performing antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST). One common method of AST is the Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion test. In this test, a sterile swab is used to inoculate a patient's bacterial pathogen onto a Mueller-Hinton agar plate. Filter paper disks with different antibiotics are placed on the plate, and the presence of a clear circular zone of inhibition around a disk indicates susceptibility to that antibiotic.