Evaluation of non-automated techniques for phenotypic detection of VanA-type Staphylococcus aureus

The study presented here was performed to evaluate the ability of various nonautomated in vitro susceptibility testing methods to detect glycopeptide resistance in the three presently identified strains of VanA-type methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. To this end, MICs were determined according to the guidelines of the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards, the Comité de l'Antibiogramme de la Société Française de Microbiologie and the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and by using the E-test, agar disc diffusion, agar screening plates, and ATB galleries. In each of these methods, vancomycin was more efficient than teicoplanin for detecting glycopeptide resistance.