Curious if anyone has used this. I haven’t found any reviews, find it rather interesting.
For the longest time vets have scoped, and if it was this easy to check by checking their fecal, why has it taken this long to figure it out.
Would love to know anyone’s experiences with this.
From the webpage, I gather that this is a method of detecting hind-gut ulcers, which you can’t really scope for. This method detects blood in the feces.
The usual method for detecting stomach ulcers is to scope. From this webpage, I am unclear if this fecal test is also claiming to diagnose stomach ulcers. It does say that it helps distinguish between foregut and hindgut issues, which is not quite the same thing. My question would be, would the blood and protein shed by stomach ulcers make it through in measurable quantities to the feces, or would the blood and protein be digested in the small intestine?
The hindgut/large intestine doesn’t digest protein, so if you had bleeding there, yes, it would make it through to the feces.
Stomach ulcers are the better-known ailment at this time, and scoping gives a very good visual diagnosis. Hindgut ulcers have been harder to diagnose, and have been a bit of a catch-all term for people trying to self-diagnose horses that seem NQR.
The causes of ulcers in the stomach and in the hindgut are very different. Typically stress and exercising on an empty stomach for stomach ulcers, and more to do with gut microbe levels in the hindgut.
Personal opinion from experience: the information you receive from the test is not worth the cost. Because blood/no blood does not necessarily equate to ulcers/no ulcers. It can be a tool to aid in diagnosis, but it is by no means a definitive answer.
I’ve had horses who responded positively to omeprazole treatment come up negative for foregut blood. I’ve had horses that tested positive for blood in the hindgut/hindgut ulcers have nothing but a heavy parasite load.
And while the kit is “convenient” because it can be used stall-side or in house at the vet clinic, it used to cost significantly more than it was to send out a fecal occult blood test to a lab. I don’t know if the price has come down. I’d probably be more inclined to use it if it were cheaper than the $75? I think I recall paying for it through the vet years ago.
I use them and they are around 35.00 I find them to be a valuable tool and they diagnose both hind and stomach ulcers.
It’s a tool, but its not super useful. It detects blood, and based upon how decomposed it is, makes an estimation of whether it is from the stomach or hind gut.
My vet uses it (along with colon ultrasound) to diagnose hind gut ulcers, since there isn’t much else available.
IMHO, the utility for stomach ulcers is extremely limited since only very bad ulcers bleed. I’d want to know if the horse had Grade 1 or Grade 2 ulcers, and my understanding is that you can’t get that from this test.
I do think if you get a strong positive, that it is very helpful to know that. My mare had the strongest positive my vet had ever seen and was a different horse after treatment.
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