COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN THE VITEK2 AND THE API 20 STEP REGARDING THE IDENTIFICATION OF MEDICALLY RELEVANT STREPTOCOCCI.

Abstract

Background and aim of study: The current study aims to compare between the Vitek2 GP ID BioMérieux® cards and the API 20 Strep BioMérieux® regarding the identification of medically relevant Streptococci. Methods: This was a Cross sectional descriptive study that took place at the Central Microbiology Laboratory, Clinical Pathology Department, Ain Shams University Hospitals from August 2021 to February 2022. A Total 50 Medically relevant isolates of Streptococci recovered from different clinical samples were subjected to species identification using The API 20 Strep and the VITEK2 system using GP ID card. Results: A statistically excellent agreement (%) = 45/50 = 90%; Disagreement (%) = 5/50= 10% was observed between VITEK® 2 system and the API 20 Strep method regarding identification results of the Streptococci spp. with (Kappa = 0.90 and p-value <0.001). Conclusions: VITEK® 2 shows a very good and trustable accuracy and has dominate advantages in identification time as compared to manual API microsystems in clinical lab.