Identification of Staphylococcus pettenkoferi Isolated from Blood Culture

Staphylococcus pettenkoferi is a coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS) of growing concern. As CoNS could be an important cause of infections in hospitalized patients, especially in immunocompromised patients, accurate identification is critical to timely and effective treatment. In the past, S. pettenkoferi was not identifed by conventional methods or was misidentified as another Staphylococcus species or another genus. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case of S. pettenkoferi identified using Vitek MS (bioMérieux, France). Two patients admitted to our hospital were confirmed to have bacteremia caused by S. pettenkoferi, which was identified in blood cultures using Vitek MS (bioMérieux). Therefore, we recommend using the Vitek MS (bioMérieux) for rapid and accurate identification of the pathogen causing bloodstream infection when CoNS is suspected. (Ann Clin Microbiol 2019;22:77-79)