Multicenter clinical evaluation of VRESelect agar for identification of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium

Abstract

A chromogenic medium for identification of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium, VRESelect, was compared to bile esculin azide agar with 6 μg/ml vancomycin (BEAV) for the isolation of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) from stool specimens. At 24 to 28 h, VRESelect demonstrated 98.7% (confidence interval [CI], 96.1 to 99.7%) sensitivity and 99.0% (CI, 98.0 to 99.6%) specificity versus 85.1% (CI, 79.8 to 89.5%) and 90.1% (CI, 79.8 to 89.5%) sensitivity and specificity, respectively, for BEAV.