Introduction:

Staphylococcus aureus is an important pathogen, can cause mild skin infections, to diseases with compromise vital. The appearance of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus MRSA; It has increased its antimicrobial resistance, especially to β-lactam; hampering the handling of them infections, increasing the rates of morbidity-mortality, becoming a health public problem.

The phenotype expression of the resistance tend to be heterogeneous, hindering its detection in the laboratory by conventional methods; which increases costs in the hospital care of MRSA infections.

Objective:

To compare the phenotypes and genotypes methods for identification of hospital isolates MRSA in Pereira.

Methods:

From isolates of S. aureus obtained of three high complexity institutions of health classified as A, B and C; determined resistance to Methicillin by minimum inhibitory concentration in automated systems and mecA gene by multiplex PCR.

Results:

The phenotype prevalence of MRSA was 44.4%, the institution A presented the highest rate with 48.65%. The genotype prevalence was 57.4%; in the institutions A, B and C was 55.2%, 41.7% and 75%, respectively, with difference statistically significant (p < 0.05).

The sensitivity and specificity of the phenotype method were 99.0% and 94.7%, respectively, against the gold standard of the PCR method. The Kappa index was 0,942 indicating a very good level of concordance between methods.

Conclusion:

The prevalence of isolates MRSA in the institutions of Pereira was high. The concordance index of phenotype methods showed that they are reliable for the diagnosis of MRSA infections.

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