Streptococcus Pneumoniae, Drug-resistant Invasive Disease (DRSP) (Streptococcus pneumoniae) 1996 Case Definition

NOTE: A surveillance case definition is a set of uniform criteria used to define a disease for public health surveillance. Surveillance case definitions enable public health officials to classify and count cases consistently across reporting jurisdictions. Surveillance case definitions are not intended to be used by healthcare providers for making a clinical diagnosis or determining how to meet an individual patient’s health needs.

Clinical Description

Streptococcus pneumoniae causes many clinical syndromes, depending on the site of infection (e.g., acute otitis media, pneumonia, bacteremia, or meningitis).

Laboratory Criteria For Diagnosis

Isolation of S. pneumoniae from a normally sterile site (e.g., blood, cerebrospinal fluid, or, less commonly, joint, pleural, or pericardial fluid), AND
"Nonsusceptible" isolate (i.e., intermediate- or high-level resistance of the S. pneumoniae isolate to at least one antimicrobial agent currently approved for use in treating pneumococcal infection*^1,2

Case Classification

Probable

A clinically compatible case caused by laboratory-confirmed culture of S. pneumoniae identified as "nonsusceptible" (i.e., an oxacillin zone size of less than 20 mm) when oxacillin screening is the only method of antimicrobial susceptibility testing performed

Confirmed

A clinically compatible case that is laboratory confirmed

*Resistance defined by National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS)-approved methods and NCCLS-approved interpretive minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) standards (µg/mL) for S. pneumoniae. NCCLS recommends that all invasive S. pneumoniae isolates found to be "possibly resistant" to beta-lactams (i.e., an oxacillin zone size of less than 20 mm) by oxacillin screening should undergo further susceptibility testing by using a quantitative MIC method acceptable for penicillin, extended-spectrum cephalosporins, and other drugs as clinically indicated.¹

References

National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS). Performance standards for antimicrobial susceptibility testing. Villanova, PA: National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards, 1994;14(16); NCCLS document M100-S5.
CDC. Defining the public health impact of drug-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae: Report of a working group. MMWR 1996;45(No. RR-1).

Related Case Definition(s)

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Last Reviewed: April 16, 2021

Source: Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology