With VITEK 2 technology, antifungal susceptibility testing is now automated, standardized and rapid

• more widespread use of immunosuppressive therapies
• the frequent use of broad-spectrum antibiotics
• the common use of indwelling intravenous devices
• chronic immunosuppressive viral infections such as AIDS.

In recent years, yeast infections have become a major cause of morbidity and mortality in at-risk patient populations. Early diagnosis and prompt treatment are instrumental in successful outcomes in these infections.(1)

Why do antifungal testing?

Antifungal susceptibility testing can help guide the selection of treatment for fungal infections. The in vitro susceptibility of an infecting organism to an antimicrobial agent is one of several factors that impact therapy success. Standardized yeast susceptibility testing has been shown to have similar predictive value as with bacterial susceptibility testing.(2)

Physicians find antifungal susceptibility information helpful and will use it to guide therapy (3,4). However, in order to have a significant impact on treatment selection, the susceptibility results must be available to the physician as soon as possible.

The time to initiation of appropriate antifungal therapy can have significant impact on patient outcome. Two recent studies demonstrated that delays of 12-24 hours in start of effective antifungal therapy resulted in a mortality rate 2-3 times higher compared to patients who received more timely therapy.(5,6)

How to do antifungal testing?

Conventional methods for antifungal susceptibility testing are slow and labor intensive. New laboratory methods for susceptibility testing are now available for use in clinical laboratories.(7)
With VITEK® 2 Technology, yeast susceptibility testing is automated, standardized and rapid.

As easy to perform as VITEK 2 Gram-negative and Gram-positive susceptibility testing. Results available in as little as 13 hours with VITEK 2 Technology.(8)

Bibliography