title: Evaluation of a new commercial system for the identification of Enterobacteriaceae and non-fermentative bacteria.
abstract: The performance of a new commercial semi-automatic system (Cobas Micro, Becton Dickinson) for identification of gram-negative fermentative and non-fermentative bacilli was evaluated using strains of clinical origin belonging to 48 different species. Two groups of strains were tested: 510 strains using a long incubation period (21 hours) and 158 strains using a short incubation period (5 hours). The correct identification rate without additional tests was 95.5% and 94.3% for the tests using a long and short incubation period respectively. The findings suggest that the system is highly accurate in the identification of most clinically important gram-negative rods, but shows some shortcomings in the identification of non-fermentative bacteria. The system is easy to use, and with some changes in the database and the inclusion of gram-positive and anaerobic bacteria would offer a valuable alternative to currently available automatic identification systems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Hygiene and Medical Microbiology, University Hospital, University of Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: H K
authors.initials: HK
authors.lastname: Geiss
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Geiss
mesh_terms: D001431:Bacteriological Techniques; D004755:Enterobacteriaceae / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D005285:Fermentation; D006090:Gram-Negative Bacteria / Q000302:isolation & purification*