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Small bowel aspiration and culture

Last reviewed dd mmm yyyy. Last edited dd mmm yyyy

Authoring team

The gold standard investigation in suspected small bowel bacterial overgrowth is small bowel aspiration. The test is invasive and has a significant false negative rate.

Small bowel aspiration is conveniently performed when a biopsy is being performed to exclude other causes of malabsorption; using a pre-sterilised, sheathed cannula, the 2 ml samples must be transported rapidly to the laboratory for aerobic and anaerobic culture.

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