Performances of VITEK 2 colorimetric cards for identification of gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the new VITEK 2 identification cards that use colorimetric reading to identify gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria (GP and GN cards, respectively) in comparison to fluorimetric cards (ID-GPC and ID-GNB, respectively). A total of 580 clinical isolates and stock collection strains belonging to 116 taxa were included in the study. Of the 249 gram-positive strains tested with both the ID-GPC and GP cards, 218 (87.5%) and 235 (94.4%) strains were correctly identified (to the genus and species level), respectively. Of the 331 gram-negative strains tested with the ID-GNB and GN cards, 295 (89.1%) and 321 (97%) strains were correctly identified, respectively. Another focus of the study was to apply the percentages of correct identifications obtained in this study to the list of bacteria isolated in our laboratory (32,739 isolates) in the year 2004. We obtained 97.9% correct identifications with the colorimetric cards and 93.9% with fluorescent cards.