Stool guaiac test
Test for the presence for occult blood / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The stool guaiac test or guaiac fecal occult blood test (gFOBT) is one of several methods that detects the presence of fecal occult blood[1] (blood invisible in the feces).[2] The test involves placing a fecal sample on guaiac paper (containing a phenolic compound, alpha-guaiaconic acid, extracted from the wood resin of Guaiacum trees) and applying hydrogen peroxide which, in the presence of blood, yields a blue reaction product within seconds.
The American College of Gastroenterology has recommended the abandoning of gFOBT testing as a colorectal cancer screening tool, in favor of the fecal immunochemical test (FIT).[3] Though the FIT is preferred, even the guaiac FOB testing of average risk populations may have been sufficient to reduce the mortality associated with colon cancer by about 25%.[4] With this lower efficacy, it was not always cost effective to screen a large population with gFOBT.[5][6][7][8]