Microbiological Evaluation of the New VITEK 2 Neisseria - Haemophilus Identification Card

Abstract

ABSTRACT VITEK 2 is an automated identification system for diverse bacterial and fungal species. A new card (the Neisseria - Haemophilus [NH] card) for the identification of Neisseria spp., Haemophilus spp., and other fastidious gram-negative or gram-variable microorganisms has been developed, but its performance in a routine clinical laboratory has not yet been evaluated. In this study, a total of 188 bacterial strains belonging to the genera Actinobacillus , Campylobacter , Capnocytophaga , Cardiobacterium , Eikenella , Gardnerella , Haemophilus , Kingella , Moraxella , and Neisseria were investigated. The NH card was able to identify 171 strains (91%) correctly without the need for extra tests; one strain (0.5%) was misidentified, and five strains (2.7%) could not be classified. Eleven strains (5.8%) were identified with a low level of discrimination, and simple additional tests were required to increase the correct-identification rate to 96.8%. The results were available within 6 h. Based on these results, the new VITEK 2 NH card appears to be a good method for the identification of diverse groups of fastidious organisms, which would otherwise require testing with multiple systems. However, more work is needed to evaluate the performance of VITEK 2 with regard to Haemophilus , Actinobacillus , Cardiobacterium , Eikenella , and Kingella bacteria because of the insufficient number of strains tested in this study. Moreover, further reduction of the detection time would be desirable.