Automated systems may present problems in the identification of members of the genus Enterococcus in clinical laboratories. Having conventional physiological tests as the reference method, we evaluated the use of an automated system (VITEK - bioMérieux) in the identification of 80 isolates belonging to different species of Enterococcus. The general agreement between results obtained by the conventional method and by the Vitek GPI card was 83.7% (67/80). Among isolates of E. faecalis and E faecium we observed that the automated system correctly identified 35/40 (87.5%) and 12/14 (85.7%) of the strains, respectively. Among isolates belonging to species which are neither E. faecalis, nor E. faecium, it was observed an agreement of 20/26 (76.9%). Results point to the need of improvement in the automated systems to identify enterococci. Special consideration must be taken regarding less frequently isolated species.
Automated identification; Enterococci; E. faecalis
