Improving the ability of antimicrobial susceptibility tests to predict clinical outcome accurately: Adding metabolic evasion to the equation

•Many susceptible bacteria can survive antibiotics and cause recurrent infections.•They can enter in a slow or non-growing metabolic state in which they are tolerant of antimicrobials.•Current antimicrobial susceptibility tests (ASTs) are unable to detect this ‘metabolic evasion’ behaviour.•To improve the prediction of treatment outcomes, this phenomenon should be taken into account during diagnosis.•Activity on non-growing bacteria must be considered during the development of new drugs.