Clinical Information

Urinary tract infection (UTI) encompasses a broad range of clinical entities that vary in their clinical presentation, degree of tissue invasion, epidemiologic setting, and antibiotic therapy requirements. There are 4 major types of UTIs: urethritis, cystitis, acute urethral syndrome, and pyelonephritis. UTIs may also be classified as uncomplicated or complicated. Escherichia coli is the leading cause of uncomplicated community-acquired UTI. Risk factors that predispose one to complicated UTIs include underlying diseases that are associated with kidney infection (eg, diabetes); kidney stones; structural or functional urinary tract abnormalities and indwelling urinary catheters. Another classification of UTIs is as upper UTI (related to the kidney, renal pelvis, or ureter) or lower UTI (urinary bladder and urethra). The classic symptoms of upper UTI are fever (often with chills) and flank pain. Frequent painful urination, urgency, and dysuria are more often associated with lower UTI.

Antimicrobial susceptibility testing determines the minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) value of selected antimicrobial agents against isolated potentially disease-causing bacteria. The MIC is the lowest antimicrobial concentration (of a series of increasing concentrations) that inhibits growth of the bacterium. Agar dilution MIC testing is performed by testing for growth of bacteria on agar plates containing varying concentrations of antimicrobial agents.

For each organism-antimicrobial agent combination, the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute and/or the European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing provides interpretive criteria for determining whether the MIC should be interpreted as susceptible, susceptible-dose dependent, intermediate, nonsusceptible, resistant, or epidemiological cutoff value.