By Carla Williams, MT (ASCP), Microbiology Lead Tech, Memorial Lufkin Health Center

Memorial Lufkin Health Center is an acute care facility. The lab serves a three-hospital
system, as well as a dialysis center, cancer center and a large outpatient base. It is located in Lufkin, Texas.

Memorial Lufkin was one of the very first customers to have a Sensititre® ARIS AST/ID system installed. As a matter of fact, an ARIS unit with the serial number 10 was placed here in the 1980’s, even before I was a Med Tech student. Memorial loved the ARIS, as it never gave us a bit of trouble. However, a few years ago, a rapid system was brought into our laboratory to replace it as our AST/ID primary automated system.

We had continued to use Sensititre plates for testing non fermenting Gram negative and Streptococcal isolates, that our rapid system would not accurately test. And finally, after several years of really missing our ARIS, I was able to reinstitute its use in the Fall of 2008.

So why did we come back? As microbiologists, we just love the fact that with the ARIS 2X, you can read the Sensititre plates visually, and see where the MIC is! With our previous rapid system, we never felt truly comfortable with the fact that changing the organism ID would change the MIC result. But the ARIS 2X does not extrapolate an MIC value by matching a growth curve; it is a true endpoint determination.

As part of the ARIS 2X System, we also received the new Vizion digital imaging system (Part No. V-2020). The Vizion System gives us the ability to review offshift manual isolate results. We did not have that option on our previous system, so this gives our laboratory the flexibility to turn out results in a timely fashion.

We are very excited about using the new Gram positive All-in-One (Part No.GPALL1F) MIC plate, which we can read manually on the Vizion System, or with the automated ARIS 2X. It is going to be the most marvelous format for us! Dtest is right on the plate, and our Sensititre SWIN software automatically applies changes to the clindamycin result for us. Even the rapid systems require 18 hours for Dtest results! We are thrilled that we can eliminate all the extra testing (Dtest, Cefoxitin screen, Vancomycin agar, Etest) we had been doing for Gram positive organisms.

The Sensititre identification products are great, as well. We don’t have to add any reagents, and we don’t get notices that additional esoteric tests are required to differentiate a growing list of organisms. The Sensititre SWIN® software just alerts us to input simple growth characteristics or spot tests that we typically already have results for in our bench notes, and then recalculates the improved ID results.

Our technologists truly believe that the Sensititre ARIS 2X is the ONLY real choice. The security that we feel in our MIC results is the primary reason but there is just no comparison for a truly mess free, closed system which requires no maintenance or reagents. Do we miss our rapid system? The answer from my technologists would be a resounding, “No!”

We have so much confidence in TREK that we have submitted a purchase order for a VersaTREK blood culture instrument, and look forward to its installation, as well as the cost savings that it will provide. We anticipate continuing to work with TREK for a very long time!