What will your doctor do?
Diagnosing stomach ulcers has become easier nowadays for doctors. Several options are available including lab investigations, imaging tests, and endoscopy. Lab investigations that your doctor might order include a complete blood picture to assess blood loss from the ulcer as well as other routine investigations including liver and kidney function tests. There aren’t many options for imaging a stomach ulcer, but your doctor may use barium meal -which is a type of contrast with Xray- to see the ulcer.
Diagnosing H. Pylori infection is also of utmost importance. It includes a stool antigen test and a urea breath test. Both of which can be done quickly and non-invasively. They check for markers of H. Pylori infection and in the follow-up of cases who received treatment. Another option is to
detect H. Pylori infection through tests done on samples taken by endoscopy from the stomach. In general, endoscopy is only done for a select few cases when the diagnosis of stomach ulcer is unclear or to exclude cancer.