New Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute Guideline Addresses Quality Control for Commercial Microbial Identification Systems

WAYNE, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Microbial identification systems (MISs) are test systems that utilize multiple substrates and/or reagents to identify aerobic or anaerobic bacteria, yeasts, moulds, or yeast-like algae grown from culture. MISs have become increasingly complex, which has resulted in the need for a greater number of quality control (QC) organisms to check positive and negative reactivity for all components. In 2005, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), at the suggestion of the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Advisory Committee (CLIAC), conducted a microbiology laboratory survey to determine the QC failure rates of commercial MISs in a random selection of laboratories that perform bacterial and fungal identification from culture. The data showed a failure rate of less than 0.1% for all commercial MISs surveyed.

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