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Three hundred and three strains of coagulase-negative staphylococci (CNS) were collected from the fingers of healthy donors (289) and from blood cultures (14). Twelve different species were identified (5 S. auricularis, 45 S. capitis, 15 S. cohnii, 86 S. epidermidis, 23 S. haemolyticus, 37 S. hominis, 1 S. lentus, 5 S. saprophyticus, 7 S. sciuri, 6 S. simulans, 54 S. xylosus and 19 S. warneri). Amongst these CNS strains, 151 were slime producers, 112 were phage-typable and 188, 133, 126 and 91 were, respectively, resistant to penicillin, teicoplanin, erythromycin and kanamycin. Slime-producing strains were resistant to at least seven antibiotics with a probability of 0.01 < P < 0.05. Non-slime-producing strains were sensitive to all the tested antibiotics with a probability of 0.001 < P < 0.01. There was no direct relationship between antibiotic sensitivity and phage type, although a non-typable strain was more often resistant to seven or more antibiotics than a typable one (0.05 < P < 0.1).

Seventy-nine staphylococcal strains isolated from blood cultures (57 coagulase-negative staphylococci (CNS) and 22 S. aureus) and 308 CNS isolated from the skin of healthy donors were phage typed. S. epidermidis and S. capitis were readily typed with 91 strains out of 124 and 24 strains out of 43 strains being successful. Species such as S. haemolyticus, S. hominis and S. simulans could be moderately phage typed. Others gave only a few strains capable of being typed, such as S. saprophyticus and S. sciuri. Under our experimental conditions the S. warneri, S. xylosus and S. cohnii could not be typed with our set of phages.