Evaluation of the susceptibility of pathogenic Candida species to fluconazole

A fluconazole 25 mu g disk diffusion test was used to test 2230 consecutively isolated Candida strains from 42 different hospital laboratories in 23 countries, Ninety seven percent of 1634 Candida albicans isolates and 83.4% of 596 non-Candida albicans isolates were susceptible to fluconazole, applying the proposed breakpoints (equal to or greater than 26 mm for susceptible strains and 18-25 mm for dose-dependent susceptible strains). This is the first hospital laboratory study to evaluate a large number and wide range of sequential Candida isolates from patients with all types of hospital infections, The fluconazole disk diffusion test appears to be a low-cost, reproducible, and accurate means of assessing the in vitro susceptibility of Candida isolates.