A peer reviewed pan-European study in The Journal of Water and Health, ‘Evaluation of an MPN test for the rapid enumeration of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) in hospital waters (doi:10.2166/wh.2014.187)’, has concluded that the IDEXX Pseudalert/Quanti-Tray method for rapid detection of P. aeruginosa ‘produces confirmed results in a shorter time than the standard reference ISO 16266 and the MoDW Part 8 PACN agar membrane filtration method, with no further confirmation steps’.
IDEXX, a specialist in rapid microbiological testing for water, says the study also concluded that Pseudalert/ Quanti-tray was ‘a valid alternative method for hospital water analysis’.
The company added: “The study, conducted on both routine hospital water samples and artificially contaminated samples, compared the performance of the traditional membrane filtration technique, which produces presumptive positive results in 40-48 hours, with Pseudalert/QuantiTray, which gives confirmed results after 24 hours.
“For routine samples, the data indicated at least equivalent performance from Pseudalert/ Quanti-Tray, while for the artificially contaminated samples, higher counts of P. aeruginosa were recorded by Pseudalert/Quanti-Tray. All studies were conducted in accordance with ISO 17994:2014.”
