Hi @telamelo, I had already read that paper at the end of the press release before I posted, that’s where I got my information. These are the results from the paper ...
Quote
4,603 BBL Chromagar MRSA plates were read in parallel between the APAS and manual reading. Of these 4603 samples, 261 samples were called presumptive positive by APAS. Manual reading conrmed 170 of these to be true positives, while 92 required discrepant analysis. Discrepant analysis revealed that greater than 50% of APAS false positives were caused by inoculum eect, 13% were caused by agar thinning or breaking, and 27% were due to non-MRSA microbes producing mauve-like pigment. Interestingly, 3% of the discrepant presumptive positives called by APAS were true MRSA missed by manual reading. The PPA and NPA after discrepant analysis were 100% and 98%, respectively. The time motion studies determined a 10% reduction in technologist time per week.
As you can see, the positive cultures missed by the microbiologists were 3% of those cultures with discrepancies. These discrepancies were caused either by plating errors or using medium (agar) that was faulty and should not have been used ... to me this is a quality control issue. Don’t get me wrong, I think the results are good, but IMO LBT need to address these issues of quality control, this is not a big problem and is one that is easily rectified. It’s important to remember that this is a screening process, and that all APAS positives will be subject to further testing by microbiologists before the specimen from the patient will be declared as MRSA.
I hope this adds clarity for you.
