H. pylori treatment

[nafnaf]

My wife just had an endoscopy showing lesions in the stomach and intestinal metaplasia. It did not show presence of H. pylori. She takes Prilosec!

1) My understanding is that if a patient is taking a proton pump inhibitor like Prilosec the endoscopy will not reveal presence of H. pylori even if it is there. She should have stopped taking it 2 weeks before the endoscopy.  Is that correct?

2) She has asked for a breath (urea) test but her doctor has not given her one. Wouldn't that be useful? She has GERD and I don't know whether it would be harmful to stop taking Prilosec 2 weeks before the breath test.

3) I understand that once metaplasia has set in, even the eradication of H. pylori is less valuable.

4) Should she just assume --- if no breath test is given --- that H. pylori is present and ask for   amoxicillin/prilosec therapy? Problem is that after such treatment antibodies stay in the blood stream so you never know if the H. pylori has been eradicated, right?

If possible I would like a GI doctor to answer this one. Thank you.

By the way, my wife had metaplasia of the cervix and a D&C cured that one, but she does not want to have part of her stomach removed.

What sort of treatment would you recommend for a patient who has metaplasia and lesions in the stomach but the endoscopy showed no H. pylori? She takes Prilosec and sometimes Reglan.

If possible I would like a GI doctor to answer this one. Thank you.

[Yorgo]

My wife went thru two treatments of H. Pylori. After eradication the only reliable tests are the breath test or a biopsy for the first year following treatment. I can say for sure the any ant-acid shold not be taken for two weeks and anti-biotics should not be used for at least one month before the breath test. As for the free doctor comment, it says $16.00 question. I have a resent post (today). In studying the MD responses to GI questions the MD seems to regurgitate the same answer to multiple questions.

Good luck.

[CalGal]

If you'd like to have a doc answer your question, you may want to post this over on the other gastro board which is monitored by a doc. It's a fee-based board.