RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The impact of brushing teeth on carbon-14 urea breath test results.
JF Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
JO J. Nucl. Med. Technol.
FD Society of Nuclear Medicine
SP 162
OP 164
VO 28
IS 3
A1 E Higazy
A1 F Al-Saeedi
A1 I Loutfi
A1 S Heiba
A1 M Kalaoui
A1 B Al-Nakib
A1 S Patty
A1 A Mohammed
A1 S Gopinath
A1 M Mathew
A1 A Hussein
A1 M Samy
A1 A Elgazzar
YR 2000
UL http://tech.snmjournals.org/content/28/3/162.abstract
AB The 14C urea breath test noninvasively detects the presence of the urease-producing bacteria Helicobacter pylori in the stomach. Several sources of errors have been identified to cause false or indeterminate results on the test. The objective of this study was to identify whether brushing teeth affects the test results.We performed the 14C urea breath test on 168 patients, with breath samples counted at 10 and 20 min after oral administration of 2 microCi (74 kBq) 14C urea. Ninety-four patients brushed their teeth before the test while 74 did not.Thirty-six of the 74 patients (49%) who did not brush their teeth had positive results at 10 min, which became negative at 20 min. None of the 94 patients who brushed their teeth before testing showed this pattern with agreement of results at 10 and 20 min.We recommend brushing teeth before the 14C urea breath test since it significantly decreased the ambiguous results of the test in our laboratory.