[Retrospective microbiologic evaluation of vaginal cultures]

Vaginal culture is one of the most difficult cultures to be evaluated in clinical microbiology practice. The necessity of some expensive and complicated processes for diagnosis of some specific agents, age related variability of normal vaginal flora and failure caused by temporary presence of some pathogens in normal flora can be listed among the probable causes of that problem. In this study 8050 vaginal cultures performed in our hospital laboratories between 1 March 1999-15 September 2001 were evaluated retrospectively. It was shown that the most frequently isolated pathogens were yeasts belonging to the Candida genus (26.8%). The second most frequent pathogen (13.8%) was Gardnerella vaginalis which was an indicator of bacterial vaginosis. The rate of isolation of Trichomonas vaginalis was 2.2%. Group B streptococcus (GBS) was isolated in 2.0% of the total cultures. Some nonspecific bacteria, mainly Gram negative bacilli, were noted as colonizing agents (6.5%).