User manual

Maintaining the VITEK

2 Instrument Maintaining Disposables

VITEK

2 Instrument User Manual 7-3

510731-10EN1

Maintaining Disposables

Chapter 6 introduced the Status screen and how to incorporate it into your

workflow. A specific part of that screen is devoted to the maintenance of the

VITEK

2 disposables.

Figure 7-1: VITEK

2 Status Screen

Monitoring the Disposables

Note the two bar graphs at the bottom of the screen. The Tips graph (1,

Figure 7-1)

displays the current level of pipette tips that remain in the

instrument. The Saline graph (2) displays the level of saline that remains in

the instrument.

Interpreting the Graphs

As the two disposables are used, the shaded portion of the graphs moves to

the left. At the same time, the value inside the graph decreases

correspondingly. The graphs are marked to show full (330), three-quarter

(248), one-half (165), and one-quarter (83) capacity. If the level of either

disposable drops below 40, the value changes to Low.

What do these numbers mean and how should you use them? The graphs

and their values refer specifically to the number of antimicrobial susceptibility

tests (AST) that can be processed. This means that the graphs and values

are important only when you are processing ASTs in the Automatic Dilution

mode, that is, when the VITEK

2 instrument is performing the dilution of the

AST inocula. For example, when one of the graphs is at one-half capacity, it

means that enough of that disposable remains to process approximately 160

ASTs.