Baby's stool test positive for occult blood

Many parents check their baby's health by judging the baby's stool. This is a more intuitive reference that best reflects the baby's health. However, there are many cases of abnormal stools in babies, such as loose stools and yellowish stools, which indicate that the gastrointestinal tract has been stimulated and has an adverse reaction. So what does it mean when the baby's stool test shows positive occult blood?

What does positive occult blood in baby's stool mean?

A persistently positive fecal occult blood test may be a sign of gastric cancer! Black stools or positive fecal occult blood often indicate upper gastrointestinal bleeding. Many patients often do not pay attention to this situation, which leads to the discovery that gastric cancer has reached an advanced stage and the loss of the opportunity for treatment. Therefore, when patients have black stools or positive stool occult blood, they should be alert to the occurrence of gastric cancer.

Because some gastric cancers can cause bleeding in the early stages, especially gastric cancers located above the greater curvature of the stomach. There may be no other discomfort symptoms in the early stages, and bleeding is the only symptom. Someone conducted an occult blood test on the gastric juice of patients with early gastric cancer and found that 65% were occult blood positive. This shows that bleeding is one of the more common symptoms of gastric cancer.

First of all, gastric cancer grows very fast and requires a large amount of blood supply. It often causes necrosis and ulcers due to insufficient blood supply, leading to bleeding. Secondly, gastric cancer grows into the gastric cavity and stomach wall. Gastric cancer tissue does not have the ability of normal gastric mucosa to resist gastric acid. A large amount of gastric acid has a certain destructive effect on the cancer tissue, causing it to rupture and bleed. Third, when the tumor ruptures and invades larger blood vessels, it may cause the blood vessels to rupture, causing a large amount of bleeding, often resulting in vomiting of blood. The vomited blood is coffee-colored due to the effect of stomach acid, and the vomitus is also a coffee-like liquid. If the blood passes through the intestines, it will become brown or black under the action of intestinal bacteria and be excreted through the stool, which is commonly known as tarry stool or black stool. If the amount of bleeding is small, the stool color change is not obvious, but the stool occult blood test may show positive.

Therefore, when black stools or occult blood in the stool are found, it is important to find out the cause of the bleeding. Especially for people over 40 years old, if they find black stools or occult blood in the stool, they should go to the hospital for examination immediately to get a clear diagnosis and timely treatment.

Several cases of abnormal stool in newborns

If the newborn's stool has the following abnormalities, you should check the feeding situation or ask the doctor for diagnosis and treatment:

1. Egg drop soup-like stool: 5-10 bowel movements a day, which may contain some undigested milk lumps, but generally no mucus. This indicates indigestion and is more common in children who eat milk or milk powder.

2. Green loose stools: often occur when the weather changes, you catch a cold, or you eat indigestible food. The number of bowel movements per day is usually 5-10 times.

3. Watery stool: more common in autumn and winter, mostly caused by enterovirus infection. Children usually have bowel movements more than 10 times a day, and their bowel movements are watery and the volume is quite large.

4. Mucus or pus and blood in stool: more common in summer when the weather is a little hot, mostly caused by bacterial infection, and should also be treated as soon as possible.

5. Dark brown foamy stool: more common in artificially fed babies, mostly caused by excessive starch or sugar in the food.

6. Oily stool: The stool is light yellow, liquid, large in quantity, and shiny like oil. It can slide on the diaper or in the potty like oil beads. This means that there is too much fat in the food, which is more common in artificially fed babies.

7. Constipation: It is more common in artificially fed babies, mostly caused by hot weather, excessive sweating and too little water drinking. Children have difficulty defecating, their stools are very dry and may be in the form of particles. They often only defecate once every few days. Children may also experience symptoms such as abdominal distension and restlessness.