Fecal occult blood is tiny traces of bleeding in your stool (poop) that you can’t see or feel. It can help your doctor find out if you have a problem with your digestive tract that needs to be treated, such as colorectal cancer or lower gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding from a stomach ulcer, polyps, hemorrhoids, diverticula, or inflammatory bowel disease, also called colitis.
Medical groups recommend that people get regular screening tests for colorectal cancer to help catch the disease when it’s small and easier to treat. These include fecal occult blood tests and other stool samples that look for cancer DNA. Most adults should start getting these tests at age 45 or 50, depending on their family history and risk for colorectal cancer. They should continue to get them regularly until age 75 or older.
A fecal occult blood test can detect a lot of GI bleeding, but it’s not the only way to diagnose the source of your GI symptoms. Your doctor might order other GI tests to find out the cause of your symptoms, such as an endoscopy, flexible sigmoidoscopy, barium enema, or CT colonography.
If the gFOBT shows you have a 池袋 便潜血 high level of occult GI bleeding, your doctor might recommend that you take iron supplements to help your body replace the lost blood. They might also give you drugs to help reduce your GI bleeding or to treat anemia that can occur with this condition.
There are four methods in clinical use to screen for occult blood in stool: the guaiac-based fecal occult blood tester (gFOBT), a hematologic occult blood test, a hematologic occult DNA test, and an immunochemical heme/hemoglobin occult blood test. Each test looks for a different property of the blood in your stool, such as antibodies, heme, or globin. The hematologic occult blood tests and the hematologic occult DNA tests also look for coloration in your stool. This is important to determine whether the coloration in your stool is due to occult blood or something else, such as coffee, beets, medications, or other foods.
A positive fecal occult blood result doesn’t necessarily mean you have colon cancer or other GI problems. It does suggest that there is bleeding somewhere in the digestive tract. Your doctor may need to do other tests to figure out the source of the bleeding and how serious it is. These could include an upper GI endoscopy, a flexible sigmoidoscopy, or a colonoscopy. They might also prescribe a blood thinner to slow the bleeding or other medicines to control your symptoms.
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