DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2017.v05i04.007

Pages: 1240-1242

Infection with spiral rod shaped bacterium Helicobacter pylori induces chronic active gastritis that develops with time in a proportion of infected people to atrophic gastritis and stomach cancer. At present, the available methods to diagnose active H. pylori infection are endoscopy with biopsy for histology, culture, rapid urease tests, 13C or 14C urea breath test, urine antibody, the stool antigen test and serology. The aim of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of the quick urease test for the diagnosis of H. pylori infection compared to histology. Patients who underwent upper endoscopy for standard clinical indications (e.g. dyspepsia, abdominal pain) were enrolled. Data was expressed in micosoft excel and the statistics interpreted at 95% confidence interval using Epi Info 6.0 A total of 50 patients (27 F, 23 M, mean age 47.34±17.57) were evaluated; 29 (58%) of them were H. pylori positive by histology and 34(68%) by the quick urease method. The performance characteristics for the quick urease test for diagnosis of H. pylori infection were calculated using the histology test as gold standards. The quick urease test had a sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 76.19 as compared with the histology test. We conclude that the quick urease test is an appropriate, simple, convenient and accurate method to diagnose H. pylori infection.