The usefulness of capsulated 13C-urea breath test in diagnosis of Helicobacter pylori infection in patients with upper gastrointestinal bleeding.
BACKGROUND
H. pylori infection and peptic ulcerations and their complications such as bleeding are causally related, but the available methods used in bleeding to confirm active H. pylori lack accuracy. AIM To evaluate the usefulness of 13C-urea breath test (UBT) in diagnosing of H. pylori infection in bleeding patients.


METHODS
Eighty-one patients with upper gastrointestinal bleeding and 258 matched controls without bleeding were enrolled to the study. UBT was performed using low-dose capsulated 13C-urea and IgG antibodies to H. pylori were determined by ELISA.


RESULTS
UBT performed in bleeding patients was positive in 77.7%. In this group anti Hp IgG was positive in 79% of cases and among them gastroscopy showed 40.7% of bleeding duodenal ulcer, 38% bleeding gastric ulcer, and 86% hemorrhagic gastritis. UBT was positive in 90.9%, 77.4%, and in 52.97% cases, respectively, and it was not statistically different from that in non-bleeding controls, duodenal and gastric ulcers and gastritis. All patients with blood or "coffee grounds" in the stomach had both UBT and serology positive.


CONCLUSIONS
The UBT is simple and non-invasive method, which can be successively applied also in patients with upper gastrointestinal bleeding to detect active H. pylori infection prior to emergency endoscopy.
Winiarski
Marek
M
Department of General Surgery, Jagiellonian University College of Medicine, Krakow, Poland.
Bielanski
Wladyslaw
W
Plonka
Małgorzata
M
Dobrzanska
Maria
M
Kaminska
Anna
A
Bobrzynski
Andrzej
A
Ronturek
Peter C
PC
Konturek
Stanislaur J
SJ
D000368:Aged; D001944:Breath Tests; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004381:Duodenal Ulcer / Q000382:microbiology*; D005260:Female; D016481:Helicobacter Infections / Q000175:diagnosis*; D016480:Helicobacter pylori / Q000302:isolation & purification; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010438:Peptic Ulcer Hemorrhage / Q000382:microbiology*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014508:Urea / Q000032:analysis
D014508:Urea