Rev Esp Quimioter 2008;21(3):184-188

Comparison between Phoenix system and agar-based methods for antimicrobial susceptibility testing of Streptococcus spp

L. Martínez-Lamas ,  M. Treviño Castellano ,  P. A. Romero-Jung ,  B. J. Regueiro García 

  

Introduction. Antibiotic resistance is an emerging problem among streptococcal species, especially for severe infections. Automated diagnostic systems for antimicrobial susceptibility testing, such as BD Phoenix, is a recently available instruments that makes it possible to obtain results within 12 h.

Methods. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing results of the BD Phoenix system were compared to those obtained from Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) disk-diffusion method. Two-hundred different clinical isolates of streptococci were assayed: beta-hemolytic (n=65), viridans (n=87), S. penumoniae (n=48).

Results. Overall, there was categorical agreement greater than 96.7% (94.8% for beta-hemolytic and 97.9% for viridans group) in relationship to the disk-diffusion method. The minor error rates were less than 10% for all the antibiotics. The greatest percentage of serious errors corresponded to erythromycin and clindamycin within the beta-hemolytic group (14.7%). Overall percentage of very serious errors was less 0.5%. The results for penicillin in viridans streptococci and S. pneumoniae results showed 89.7% and 91.7% of categorical agreement, respectively, using the Etest as reference.

Conclusions. The automated BD Phoenix system is a very useful and effective diagnostic tool for quantitative testing of sensitivity to antibiotics in the streptococci group.

  

Key words: Streptococcus. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing. Phoenix. Disk-diffusion. ETest

Rev Esp Quimioter 2008;21(3):184-188 [pdf]