STUDY OF YEAST SPECIES ISOLATED FROM CLINICAL SPECIMENS.

Opportunistic yeast infections are very common in patients with malignancy or some form of immuno-suppression. Conventional methods of yeast identification are time consuming and labour intensive whereas commercial methods are expensive and beyond reach of most laboratories. Disk diffusion method offers a relatively simple, inexpensive and rapid method of identifying yeasts. 63 specimens of yeasts were isolated and identified from 68 patients by conventional methods. With disk diffusion method 54 of 63 species (85.7%) gave the same identification.