How often to retest patients

[Aaron Hartman]

Once you have done an OAT for a patient and addressed the issues (ie-yeast and bacteria) how long do you wait until retesting? and how do you determine long term anti-microbial use? do you keep on long term maintenance or just use probiotics? For example, the 9 year old girl’s who’s OAT you reviewed at lecture 3 had this testing done due to renal stones, her behavior is fine (besides being a 9 year old) and she has CP with some learning and neuro issues. She did a round of diflucan and now is on Biocidin with probiotics. Would you retest in 1 month to see if resolution and if so then continue the botanical indefinitely or wait a little longer to retest?

I know this has to be patient specific but I’d appreciate so overarching guidance and principles on this.

Thanks
Aaron Hartman MD

[DrWoeller]

Dr. Hartman,
In general I like to get at least two OATs per year on patients. This is to check changes in metabolic markers, or the recurrence of problems that may contribute to behavior or learning problems moving forward.

When treating clostridia bacteria I like to retest during the last week of a specific protocol while the child is still on the remedies, i.e. Biocidin or antibiotics. If everything cleared than I will come back later and repeat the test 2 months later. One nice option for the OAT is to do the Microbial OAT which looks specifically at the yeast and bacteria markers and is less expensive than the full OAT.

I find that yeast markers respond more slowly than bacteria. This likely has to do with the pathogenicity of candida so I will tend to repeat the OAT within 2 to 3 months of initiating antifungal treatment, and then every 3 to 4 months thereafter.

If I was purely focusing on high oxalates and perhaps some mitochondrial and essential fatty acid/nutritional markers I would follow the same guidelines that I mentioned for candida. However, in these circumstances you will need to do the full OAT because the Microbial OAT doesn’t have the oxalate and other metabolic markers.

As a general rule I like to get a repeat test within about 2 months of initial intervention to see if things have resolved or at least improving. If Candida and/or clostridia have resolved I will do maintenance remedies, i.e. probiotics, biocidin and then retest again a few months later.

I hope this helps,
Dr. Woeller

[Author]

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