PREDICTIVE VALUES OF SPECIES IDENTIFICATIONS FROM THE VITEK GRAM-POSITIVE-IDENTIFICATION-CARD USING CLINICAL ISOLATES OF COAGULASE-NEGATIVESTAPHYLOCOCCI

The Gram-Positive Identification Card (GPI, bioMerieux Vitek) was comp ared to conventional tests for identification of 616 clinical isolates of coagulase-negative staphylococci. All tests were inoculated with s ubcultures from single isolated colonies, The predictive values of GPI species' identifications (the number of the system's correct calls di vided by tile total number of calls for each species) were 100% (12 of 12) for Staphylococcus capitis, 100% (79 of 79) for S saprophyticus, 98.4% (246 of 250) for S epidermidis and 96.0% (120 of 125) for S haem olyticus, but only 64.5% (69 of 107) for the other species analyzed. W hen tin infrequently encountered Staphylococcus species is named using the GPI, the identification should he confirmed using additional test s.