EVALUATING THE PERFORMANCE OF ATP BIOLUMINESCENCE METHOD BY COMPARISON WITH CLASSICAL CULTURAL METHOD

Abstract

Verification of the performance of the sanitation procedure is as important as the actual application. The methods that are going to be used for such verification needs to be user friendly and rapid resulting to apply the corrective actions promptly. Additionally, these methods should also be reliable besides their fast resulting. ATP bioluminescence method is recommended to be a solution for such procedures for many years. In this present study, our aim was to evaluate the performance of ATP bioluminescence method by comparison with golden standard classical cultural method. For this we performed parallel testing on surfaces which were experimentally contaminated with different types of microorganisms. The results showed that ATP bioluminescence gives more reliable results in surfaces which do not have any physical dirt and are contaminated with high level of microorganisms. The most reliable results were obtained from Salmonella contaminated surfaces.