Diagnosing the superficial fungal infection is important for initiating appropriate treatment and epidemiological purposes. Dermatophytes cause the majority of these infections. The rising prevalence of these infections worldwide, increased and uncontrolled use of antifungals and corticosteroids, rising burden of the immune-compromised population, and antifungal drug resistance pose therapeutic challenges to practitioners. The study's main objective was to isolate, identify and determine the antifungal susceptibility of the dermatophytes causing superficial mycosis. This was a cross-sectional study from a tertiary care centre in South India. Samples were collected from 130 patients clinically diagnosed to have dermatophytosis. All the samples were examined by microscopy using a KOH mount and culture. Species identification was done by slide culture and Lactophenol Cotton Blue mount, and performed antifungal susceptibility testing against common antifungals by broth microdilution method. Descriptive statistics expressed the nominal variables' number of cases and percentage (%). On analysis, the males to females’ ratio was 1.7:1. Adults were affected more than children. Tineacorporis was the commonest clinical type (65.3%), followed by tineacruris (26.2%). Among the clinically diagnosed dermatophytosis, KOH mount had a higher positivity rate over yield in culture (69.2% versus 48.4%). Trichophyton mentagrophytes were the commonest isolate, 38 (60.3%), followed by Trichophyton rubrum 23 (36.5%). Voriconazole was found to have low MIC values for most of the isolates tested compared to the standard strain. The percentage of isolates having higher MIC than the standard for Itraconazole, amphotericin B, terbinafine, and fluconazole were 11.6%, 20.9%, 32.5%, and 41.8%, respectively. Most isolates had higher MIC for griseofulvin, suggesting resistance in South India. The findings conclude that the direct microscopic examination by KOH mount was more sensitive than culture, and the most common fungal pathogen isolated was Trichophyton mentagrophytes. Griseofulvin showed the least activity among the six antifungals tested, and voriconazole performed best with the least number of isolates with high MIC.

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