Evaluation of two chromogenic media for the isolation and identification of urinary tract pathogens.

Chromogenic media (CM) are available for urine specimens (US) to enable rapid identification of common urinary tract pathogens (UTP). Two CM, chromID™ CPS (CPS4) agar (bioMérieux, St. Laurent, QC) and UriSelect™ 4 (URS4) agar (Bio-Rad, Montreal, QC), were compared to the standard media (SM) for the isolation and identification of UTP. Over a 10-day period, US were inoculated to CPS4, URS4, and SM (BAP and MAC). CM interpretation was done according to the product inserts by one person blinded to the results of SM. SM were read by experienced technologists according to protocol and isolates were identified using BD Phoenix™. The results were grouped into significant (SG), mixed (MG), and no significant growth (NSG). A total of 903 US were studied. SM identified 239 SG, 112 MG, and 552 NSG cultures. The most common pathogens were Escherichia coli (38 %) and Enterococcus spp. (11 %). Comparing CM to SM, the exact agreement was 89.3 and 89.5 % for URS4 and CPS4, respectively. When grouped by clinical significance, agreement with SM was 93.0 and 93.1 % for URS4 and CPS4, respectively. CM were equivalent with respect to processing time. Advantages include decreased need for automated identification of certain species, particularly E. coli. In terms of workflow, CM enables same-day identification for almost 50 % of significant UTP. Overall, both CM compared well to SM and allowed for rapid preliminary identification of many UTP.