Earlier targeted therapy is feasible.
Concentration-adjusted direct disk diffusion from urine can deliver reliable susceptibility results up to 24 hours sooner than standard workflows, enabling earlier de-escalation or escalation of therapy in suspected UTIs.

Accounting for bacterial load improves accuracy.
Explicitly correcting for the inoculum effect substantially improves classification of resistance compared with unadjusted direct testing, achieving >93% agreement with standard AST and reducing false resistance or susceptibility calls.

Practical for stewardship-focused settings—but not yet plug-and-play.
The methods integrate easily with disk diffusion workflows and are promising for routine or resource-limited labs but still require validated concentration-specific thresholds or regression models and broader pathogen/antibiotic validation before widespread adoption.