Clinical usefulness of acid steatocrit in pediatric practice.

The steatocrit technique has been frequently used in the follow up of malabsorption syndromes. The classical steatocrit method has recently been improved by adding perchloric acid to the fecal homogenate (acid steatocrit), this technique showed a better correlation with fecal fat concentration than the classical test. In our protocol, we aimed at an assessment of the clinical usefulness of the acid steatocrit when compared to the traditional technique. Children who were referred to the laboratory for evaluation of steatorrhea were studied by the fecal fat balance, which was taken as a gold standard method for the comparison between both steatocrits. The method was slightly modified, by using hydrochloric instead of perchloric acid. Our results showed a sensitivity of 88.8% for the acid steatocrit and 66.7% for the classical method, at a 1.6% cut off value. We suggest the method as useful to rule out steatorrhea, thus selecting those children who should not be submitted to more laborious and time consuming methods such as the fecal fat balance.