# Trying to decide if I should take the tests



## never_walk (Jan 10, 2005)

Hi, I'm new to the board and I've got a question that I've been brooding on. I'm pretty sure that I've had IBS for several years now. Everytime a doctor asks to check me out to be sure, I chicken out. Since there really isn't anything that the doctor can do for me that I'm not doing already, I don't see the point. But I thought I'd ask if perhaps I should go ahead and let him make sure.


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## Kathleen M. (Nov 16, 1999)

A lot depends on which tests, and what your symptoms are.If things are pretty clearly IBS, and at least the stool tests and blood tests are all normal (and you are not getting into the age range you need colonoscopies regularly anyway) it is usually OK to forgo the tests (sometimes extensive invasive tests only make IBS worse when there is a very small chance of finding anything).But this only is if you have no red flag symptoms (no pain wakes you up at night, no bleeding, no anemia, no unexplained weight loss, etc.).Sometimes in these situations it makes sense to talk to the doctor with the following sorts of questions.What are the chances you will find anything we don't know about already?What are the chances of adverse outcomes from the test itself?Even if you find something different from what we know already, will that change the treatments we are doing? Like I didn't have an endoscopy when we pretty much figured I had some gastritis. Even from the symptoms I had, without the test, he was going to prescribe Nexium anyway, even it it were something other than simple gastritis (ulcer or reflux) he would have prescribed Nexium for that. So since that test would have changed nothing, we didn't do it. But I did do a blood test for screening for H. pylori, because if I had that with the gastritis that would have changed the treatment, and he would have added treatment to eradicate the H.p.K.


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