Evaluation of commercial systems for the identification of clinical yeast isolates

The Analytab Products Inc. (API), Micro-Drop (MD), and Uni-Yeast-Tek (UYT) systems for the presumptive identification of common clinical yeast isolates were compared with the oxidation-fermentation (OF) and a conventional procedure. With 229 coded isolates, the identification accuracies were API 94, MD 83, OF 82, and UYT 99%. The API system required the greatest technical ability. The MD materials were prone to malfunction. OF media, if incubated beyond 14 days, gave an accuracy of 87%, but this offered no advantage over the conventional procedure. The UYT system was the easiest to use.