I was privileged to go to the ASA Antimicrobials conference in Adelaide last week. Although I have not been to this particular conference for a few years, it is one of my favourites. It is not too big, it has a good mixture of clinical microbiologists, ID physicians and microbiology scientists attending, and the quality of the talks is generally very high. there were very few talks that I did not take anything away from.
Here are a few of the highlights below:
Angela Huttner gave an excellent talk on UTI, and reminded us that the definitions of uncomplicated v complicated UTI have changed, moving more towards extent of infection within the urinary system, and away from host factors. This makes a lot of sense to me, and simplifies things a lot for the lab in terms of testing and reporting.
Angela also reminded the audience that enterococci and Group B streptococci are uncommon causes of uncomplicated cystitis in young women. Voided midstream urine culture and acute cystitis in premenopausal women – PubMed. I will need to go back to my lab and sort out suitable comments to go on enterococcal and Group B strep urinary isolates on this cohort. We almost certainly overplay their significance…
Hemalatha Varadhan informed us that they were no longer culturing central line tips at their institution in NSW, on the grounds of poor sensitivity, specificity, and the fact that it is not required for the definition of a CLABSI. Good for her I thought. If they can do it, why can’t we at our own lab. I will do some reading and have a chat to our stakeholders…
Chris Blyth presented on “newish vaccines” with a focus on RSV, meningococcal and emerging Gp B strep vaccines. He also reminded us that it is one thing to develop new vaccines, it is quite another to persuade people to get them…
Steven Tong presented an update on the legendary SNAP trial for Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia. A good refresher, and a reminder that further evidence-based answers on SAB management issues are not far away.
Tony Korman gave us an irreverent but highly entertaining review of 2025: The Year in Clinical Microbiology” and highlighted the debates on Twitter/X such as “Oral is the new IV”, “Shorter is better” and the CRP/ESR “Zombie tests”. Angela Huttner commented on the lack of nuance that sometimes occurs in such debates when the argument is presented in a black and white fashion.
John Turnidge and his team gave an excellent EUCAST/AUSCAST session. It was a good reminder of the amount of work that goes into antimicrobial breakpoint setting. Tony Korman made the excellent point that implementation of EUCAST guidelines on a practical level is becoming increasingly problematic for diagnostic laboratories and that this should be taken into consideration by the EUCAST team when issuing their annual updates.
I was fortunate enough to be able to present myself at the conference, kindly invited by BD to present on diagnostic stewardship at the BD sponsored lunchtime symposium. Being an inveterate introvert, I was quite nervous to begin with, but soon settled down and got my diagnostic stewardship messages across to an audience which seemed engaged in my presentation (I think!).
It was my first visit to Adelaide. It is a very nice place, nice climate, friendly people and quite a lot to do. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to visit the Barossa Valley vineyards, next time hopefully!
Michael
