With the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s August clearance, VITEK MS from bioMerieux (Durham, N.C., and France) became the first mass spectrometry-based system approved for rapid clinical identification of 193 microorganisms. The technology enables significantly more rapid bacterial and fungal identification and quicker drug susceptibility testing, which can improve anti-microbial management and decrease associated health care expenditures. While the term “game-changer” is often overused, experts agree that the use of mass spectrometry for bacterial identification has the potential to truly alter laboratory workflow and profoundly enhance timely clinical care by cutting the time needed for identification of microbial infectious agents from days to hours. “MALDI-TOF [matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight] will have one of the greatest impacts on clinical microbiology since the use of molecular amplification methods for the identification of pathogens,” said Christine C. Ginocchio, Ph.D., the senior medical director at North Shore-LIJ Health System Laboratories, whose lab has been investigationally using the system for a year. The system is based on Nobel prize-winning MALDI technology. The soft ionization technique uses a special matrix solution that prevents fragmentation of large molecules. The travel time of the charged molecules is measured with TOF directly proportional to the molecules’ mass. This […]