Objective: Tuberculosis has high morbidity and mortality, so it requires rapid diagnosis and treatment. Microscopic examination has an important place in the diagnosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infections. The aim of this study is to compare two different protocols of an automated mycobacteria staining system with the manual staining method in terms of performance and quality, and to show that automated system can be used without cross-contamination.

Method: In this study, acidoresistance staining positive (ARS+) 100 pulmonary specimens which were sent to a university hospital laboratory for routine analysis were examined. Clinical samples were decontaminated, then a total of three smears were prepared from these samples.These smears were stained according to manual fluorescence staining protocol, conventional automated staining protocol and short protocol respectively. Smears were examined in terms of the presence of artefacts, the color brightness and the ease of evaluation.

Results: Positive controls evaluated in the study were positive,and negative controls were negative, any crosscontamination was not detected in any sample in the automated staining system. The agreement between the results obtained in the manual staining protocol and the automated staining system (conventional and short protocol) was 84% and 82% for smear grade, 92% and 85% for presence of artefacts, 86% and 89% for brightness of the color, 91% and 89% for the ease of evaluation, respectively. The Cohen’s kappa coefficients between the manual protocol, the automated conventional and short protocols were 0.79 and 0.76 that are considered as indicative of excellent agreement, respectively.

Conclusion: The automated staining system can be used because it decreases the chemical contamination, reduces workload in specialized laboratories which perform medium to high numbers of staining in their daily practice and improves standardization of staining methods.