Puesta al día en aspectos microbiológicos de enterococos / Update on microbiological topics of enterococci

RESUMO

Clinical microbiology laboratories are faced with the challenge of accurate detection of emerging antibiotic resistance among several important gram positive bacterial pahtogens. For enterococci, vancomycin and ampicillin resistance was significantly more prevalent among E. faecium than among E. faecalis. This finding undescores the importance of identifying enterococcal isolates to species for the sake of more precise surveillance. Enterococci are identified to the genus level with tests like pyrrolidine amilaridase, bile esculin and salt tolerance, but in some instances, species identification is desirable. Initial characterization of the species, as well as the antimicrobial susceptibility testing in enterococci, will be discussed in this report