Occult Test Showed Hidden Blood. Colonoscopy Showed No Polyps Or Abnormalities. What Does This Mean?

Posted on Mon, 25 Mar 2013

Medically reviewed by Ask A Doctor - 24x7 Medical Review Team

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 Answered on

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 Last reviewed on

Question : I am 82 yes of age and I had an occult test which showed hidden blood but the follow up colonoscopy showed no polyps or abnormalities. what does this mean

Answered by Dr. Grzegorz Stanko (18 minutes later)

Hello!

Thank you for the query.

Colonoscopy test result is the valid result. It simply means that FOBT has been false positive. It is because this test reveals blood in the stool and other similar chemical substances like meat parts. That is why it is necessary to have 3 days without any meat before performing this test.

And even with such diet it can still give some false positive results (depending of the type of this test).

So you should not worry about it anymore as colonoscopy did not showed anything wrong.

Hope this will help. Feel free to ask further questions.
Regards.

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Chakravarthy Mazumdar