Dear editor, the fecal occult blood test is the presently widely used screening laboratory test for colorectal cancer. At present, the test is usually based on an immunological diagnostic principle (1, 2). A false positive fecal occult blood is common and widely mentioned in literature. Nevertheless, the false negative is little mentioned in the paper. Here, the authors discuss the issue of the...

BACKGROUND Testing stool for occult blood at the time of digital rectal examination (DRE) has been discouraged because it is thought to increase the number of false-positive test results. OBJECTIVE To compare the diagnostic yield of colonoscopy and the cost per cancer detected in asymptomatic patients with a positive fecal occult blood test result obtained by DRE with that obtained from spont...

Because acute bacterial gastroenteritis is often inflammatory, rapid stool assays that detect intestinal inflammation might be used to distinguish between bacterial and nonbacterial gastroenteritis. We performed meta-analyses to determine the discriminatory power, in developed and in resource-poor countries, of rapid stool assays that test for lactoferrin, fecal leukocytes, fecal erythrocytes, ...

Stool for occult blood is a frequently ordered test and a common finding in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). To determine the incidence of occult hematochezia and its diagnostic status in predicting the development of necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) a prospective study was conducted at a tertiary level referral nursery.

The annual guaiac or immunochemical fecal occult blood test (FOBT) is one of the five colorectal cancer (CRC) screening regimens recommended by the American Cancer Society (Smith, Cokkinides, & Eyre, 2005). Stool-based deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing for CRC is considered a promising technology (Smith, Cokkinides, & Eyre, 2003). Numerous features of three noninvasive stool tests for CRC are...

Stool specimens of 1238 workers in western region of Saudi Arabia were examined for infection with intestinal parasites and for fecal occult blood (FOB) to investigate the possibility that enteroparasites correlate to occult intestinal bleeding. Direct smears and formal ether techniques were used for detection of diagnostic stages of intestinal parasites. A commercially available guaiac test wa...

The term gastrointestinal bleeding of obscure origin is used to describe bleeding of unknown origin that persists or recurs after a negative initial esophagogastroduodenoscopy and colonoscopy. We report the case of a middle-aged woman with gastrointestinal bleeding of obscure origin who had 9 stool specimens that tested negative for occult blood but was found to have adenocarcinoma of the dista...