Medical advice

How do doctors test for H. pylori?

The easiest way is a blood test. This is useful for finding out whether a person has H. pylori but the test stays positive even after the H. pylori has gone. This means that it cannot tell us whether a course of treatment has cleared the infection. Another simple technique of looking for H. pylori involves a breath test. For this you
will be given a drink containing a substance called urea. Whether or not H. pylori is present in the stomach can be detected by collecting a sample of your breath for a short time after taking the drink. This is certainly thebest test to use in order to find out whether treatment has been successful although it needs to be done at least one month after the course of treatment has finished.

Doctors can also test for H. pylori while patients are having an endoscopy. A very small piece of the lining of the stomach (a biopsy) is sent to the laboratory for a number of different tests to check whether or not H. pylori is present in the stomach.

All tests for H. pylori except the blood test may be quite inaccurate if people have had a recent course of antibiotics for any reason or have taken some of the other drugs which are used to treat ulcers. Your doctor will certainly ensure that you do not have a test for H. pylori if other medicines you might have taken recently would give a misleading result.

How can H. pylori be treated and what are the chances of success?

Treatment for H. pylori is now simple and successful at the first attempt in most people. It consists of a one week course of three different tablets, two of which are antibiotics and the third is a tablet to cut down the amount of acid in your stomach. These are all taken together twice a day. Your doctor will ask you whether you are allergic to any particular antibiotics before treatment is started.

Most people experience no side-effects from treatment, but a few notice minor problems such as a strange taste in the mouth, a feeling of sickness, diarrhoea or perhaps a headache. With one particular antibiotic that is often used, you should avoid alcohol. Treatment is much more successful if the whole course of tablets is taken exactly as prescribed and your doctor will encourage you to continue to take the tablets unless the side-effects become unpleasant. Even when treatment has been successful in clearing the bug, sometimes symptoms take a little while to settle down. If the treatment is shown to be unsuccessful in clearing H. pylori, it is possible to have further courses of therapy with different antibiotics.