evaluation of chromogenic agar medium, can it be a suitable alternative to conventional culture system for identification of uropathogens?

Background and objectives: urinary tract infections (uti) account for major proportion of outpatient load and hospital admission globally. in most of the clinical microbiology laboratories macconkey agar (mac) and cystine lactose electro- lyte-deficient (cled) agar are being used for identification of uropathogens. the main objective of the present study was to evaluate the usefulness of hicrome^tm uti by comparing isolation rate and presumptive identification of uropathogens against cled and mac agar. materials and methods: this study was conducted over a period of three months on 672 non-duplicate midstream and/or catheter-catch urine samples. all samples were inoculated on to hicrome^tm uti, cled agar and macconkey agar. results: among the 672 samples received for culture, 113 (16.8%) showed significant growth. among the 672 samples, 95 (14.1%) showed growth of a single organism while 18 (2.7%) showed polymicrobial growth. the rate of isolation and presumptive identification of the isolates and polymicrobial growth was found significantly higher on hicrome^tm uti agar. conclusion: hicrome^tm uti agar has the potential to streamline processing of samples for urine culture in a way that will reduce the workload for technicians, reduce turnaround time which in turn will benefit the laboratory ultimately leading to better patient care.