A few weeks before we did Jessica’s fecal occult blood test she was eating red meat. I think she may have been eating cantaloupe too. The bottom line is that I don’t think I had Jess eat the proper diet before the test. Red meat itself can have micro amounts of blood in it and affect the test in a negative way.
A really great article I read after doing some research on the best fecal occult blood test and trying to figure out what role vitamin C played because I was giving Jessica higher amounts of vitamin C than normally recommend. The article is entitled Diet for Fecal Occult Blood Test Screening: Help or Harm? From http://ecp.acponline.org/julaug01/fletcher.pdf. They say, “Dietary advice might decrease the positivity rates by eliminating some causes of false-positive test results. That’s what we are hoping for is that Jessica’s recent test is a false-positive. We won’t really know until we test again. The really disturbing thing to me is that, “After all, positive results, even one trace positive result in six specimens should be followed with colonoscopy – even if occult bleeding might be attributed to another cause.”
So it’s possible that we may be looking at a colonoscopy even if only one in six tests comes back positive. This is why we really need to make sure that this test was a true positive. We will eventually need to see the gastroenterologist but for now I am making more changes to Jess’s diet before we even consider a colonoscopy.
The article above lists out simple but comprehensive diet that should be followed at least two days prior to and including the test period which includes red-meat free and vitamin C in excess of 250 mg per day for 2 days prior to and during testing.
Have you had any experience with this test? Please share.