Mr. Sun participated in the physical examination organized by the unit at the end of last year. When returning the checklist, the nurse found that he had not done routine stool inspections. Mr. Sun said, “It’s dirty and troublesome to do, and I can eat it every day, so I’m in good health.”
After hearing this, the nurse was a little anxious and told Mr. Sun not to give up. This check is a variety of gastrointestinal diseases. “Alarm”.
Seeing the nurse so serious, Mr. Sun said embarrassedly: “The money is spent anyway. Since you are so important, I will do it!” The
test result of Mr. Sun’s stool routine is positive for occult blood. On the advice of the doctor, Mr. Sun went to the gastroenterology department and performed a gastroscope, and he found the problem—early gastric cancer. Soon, Mr. Sun underwent endoscopic resection. According to the doctor in charge of the operation, Mr. Sun’s postoperative pathological results indicated that the edges of the tumor were all negative, indicating that fortunately, the tumor was found early and the tumor was completely removed.
Mr. Sun’s experience reminds us that routine stool examination is not an insignificant physical examination item. It can assist in the diagnosis of digestive tract diseases, such as intestinal infectious diseases, intestinal parasitic infections, identification of gastrointestinal bleeding and tumor screening, and understanding of the gastrointestinal tract. Tract digestion, absorption function, etc., do not abandon the examination because of trouble and embarrassment.
Under normal circumstances, stool is mainly composed of food residues, cellulose, digestive secretions, exfoliated cells, bacteria, inorganic salts, and water that cannot be absorbed after food digestion. Stool routine is to observe and analyze the stool. The inspection items include general characteristics and microscopic examination. In the health checkup, occult blood tests are also performed on stool samples. The specific content is as follows-
1. Stool color
Under normal circumstances, human excrement is yellow or yellowish brown, while baby’s feces are golden or light yellow. If the color is different from the above, it may indicate gastrointestinal problems. For example, gray stools are related to bile duct blockage caused by roundworms, stones, tumors, etc.; black or tarry stools are related to upper gastrointestinal bleeding and excessive consumption of animal liver blood; red stools are related to hemorrhoids, polyps, and anal fissures , Cancer, etc.; if stool is clay-colored, it may be obstructive jaundice; if stool is yellow-green, it may be pseudomembranous enteritis.
2. Stool shape
Under normal circumstances, the shape of stool is cylindrical and relatively soft; abnormal stools include mucus, watery, pulpy, and hard. Generally speaking, the stool of people with long-term constipation is hard, while the stool of people with habitual constipation is sheep-like; mucus-like and pulpy stools often appear when the intestinal wall is inflamed or irritated, such as acute schistosomiasis, enteritis Etc.; mucous purulent bloody stool is mainly caused by bacillary dysentery; sauce-colored mucus is more common in amoebic dysentery; watery stool is generally caused by acute gastroenteritis.
3. Parasite detection
There are no parasite eggs, worm bodies, etc. in the feces of normal people. If it shows positive (+), it means there is a corresponding parasite or protozoan infection.
4. White blood cells
Under normal circumstances, there are very few white blood cells or even no white blood cells in human feces. Once an increase in white blood cells or purulent cells is detected, the patient has inflammatory symptoms.
5. Stool occult blood
Negative (-) is normal. If it shows positive (+), it may indicate gastrointestinal bleeding, ulcer, gastric cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, intestinal parasitic disease, colorectal cancer, etc. Clinical statistics found that about one-third of patients with adenoma and colorectal cancer have bleeding; 20% of patients with digestive tract cancer test positive for fecal occult blood in the early stage, and the positive rate of fecal occult blood in patients with advanced cancer can be as high as 90% The fecal occult blood of patients with digestive tract ulcers and digestive tract bleeding is also mostly positive or intermittently positive. If the fecal occult blood is positive, the patient needs to undergo further gastrointestinal endoscopy to confirm the diagnosis. It should be noted that eating such as beef and mutton, blood products, animal offal, potatoes, various blood tonics, etc. may lead to a positive result of the occult blood test.
Pay attention to the following when keeping stool specimens: Do not take antidiarrheal medicine, bowel defecation medicine, iron, vitamin C, etc. 3 days before the examination; the utensils for keeping stool should be clean and dry; if the stool is abnormal, the naked eye should be kept For areas that look abnormal, the amount of feces taken is the size of a soybean grain. If it is diarrhea and loose stools, you can leave more; the collected specimens should avoid contamination, and the specimens should be sent for inspection immediately, preferably not more than 1 hour.