Podcast # 327: No More Hemoccults

Emergency Medical Minute

Author: Don Stader, MD

Educational Pearls:

• The use of fecal occult blood tests is falling out of favor in emergency departments

• These tests have strong evidence suggesting their efficacy in colon cancer screening but clinical significance in ED is limited

• They have relatively high false positive and false negative rates

• Small/microscopic bleeding are often not clinically significant in the ED but can lead to increased costs from over-testing and other harms from fecal occult blood testing

References:

Gupta A, Tang Z, Agrawal D. Eliminating In-Hospital Fecal Occult Blood Testing: Our Experience with Disinvestment. American Journal of Medicine. (2018). 10.1016/j.amjmed.2018.03.002