How do doctors detect parasites?

Question

I've just read an article in a women's magazine that talks about how 1/3 of Americans may have parasites! Then it went on to list some herbal remedies. But I was wondering, what does conventional medicine think about this? How do doctors detect parasites? And how do they treat them? How do conventional remedies compare with the herbal ones as far as effectiveness goes?

Answer 1

There are a lot of different parasites, and a lot of people have them and will never know it, because some don't cause problems. Don't worry about it unless you are having weird symptoms (and by "weird" I mean stuff that lands you in the hospital or in bed for months). I went to Chile in 2005, and I drank some contaminated water. For 3 full months I was bedridden, really sick with something that felt like the flu/strep but wasn't. All year in 2006 I wasn't that sick, but I never felt "normal," and then in December I ended up in the hospital with a relapse. The way that doctors check for parasites is through stool samples. That to me is disgusting, and as sick as I was, I refused to do it, which is probably why I was back in the hospital a full year later. So if it's not broke, don't fix it, as they say, because if you have a parasite infection, you won't have to ask, because you'll know. And unless you've been traveling or ingesting really dirty things, you probably don't have anything life-threatening. If you really need to know, and your doctor thinks you're at risk, they will have you do a stool sample.

Answer 2

A CT and/or MRI scan can be used to diagnose certain parasitic infestations such as cystercercosis and echinococcus cysts. Both of these scans would require contrast, which the patient would have to drink in order to opacify the gi tract on the imaging study. Occasionally, small bowel enteroclysis with barium can be used to diagnose cases of tapeworm infestation. The term "barium meal or swallow" refers to a test used to diagnose upper GI tract disorders and most gi parasites are confined to the lower gi tract. So yes, the patient would have to drink barium but it would be for diagnosis with CT and/or MRI and would not technically be called a barium meal or swallow.

Answer 3

have to do stool test.
peri anal adesive sampling.
biopsy