[Evaluation of the Rapid-ATB system for testing the sensitivity of staphylococci to antibiotics. Comparison with the agar dilution reference method].

Rapid ATB Staph is a new, automated, four-hour procedure for testing the susceptibility to antibiotics of staphylococci. Results obtained with this method were compared to those recorded using agar dilution. For all tested antibiotics as a group (5 on 201 strains, 8 on 100 strains), overall agreement between the two sets of results was 96%. 1,809 susceptibility tests were performed, with only 24 minor discrepancies (1.3%) mainly involving cotrimoxazole, and 50 major discrepancies (2.7%) mainly involving doxycycline and chloramphenicol. Rapid ATB Staph clearly demonstrates the heterogeneous oxacillin-resistance of staphylococci as well as their inducible resistance to erythromycin. Our results show that this new system is a very accurate means for testing the susceptibility to antibiotics of staphylococci.