Fecal Occult Blood Testing in Hospitalized Patients with Upper Gastrointestinal Bleeding

Benji Mathews; Temple Ratcliffe; Raj Sehgal; James Abraham; Bradley Monash

doi:10.12788/jhm.2773

Fecal Occult Blood Testing in Hospitalized Patients with Upper Gastrointestinal Bleeding

J Hosp Med. 2017 Jul;12(7):567-569. doi: 10.12788/jhm.2773.

Authors

Benji Mathews^{1

2}, Temple Ratcliffe^{3

4}, Raj Sehgal^{3

4}, James Abraham², Bradley Monash⁵

Affiliations

¹ Regions Hospital, HealthPartners, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. benji@umn.edu.
² University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
³ University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas, USA.
⁴ South Texas Veterans Health Care System, San Antonio, Texas, USA.
⁵ University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA.

PMID: 28699947
DOI: 10.12788/jhm.2773

Abstract

A 47-year-old man with a history of alcohol abuse, cirrhosis, and grade II esophageal varices is admitted for treatment of alcohol withdrawal. He reports having some dark-colored stools a week prior to admission, but his stools since then have been normal in color. A repeat hemoglobin is stable, but a fecal occult blood test is positive. What should be done next?

Publication types

Case Reports

MeSH terms

Alcoholism / blood
Alcoholism / complications
Alcoholism / diagnosis
Gastrointestinal Hemorrhage / blood*
Gastrointestinal Hemorrhage / diagnosis*
Gastrointestinal Hemorrhage / etiology
Hospitalization* / trends
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Occult Blood*