BSP Test

by

Dr. Karen Tobias

Shunt Management Team

For the UTmost Care

22 January 2008

Question:   Is Bromosulfaphthalein (BSP) a more reliable test than a bile acid test?

Answer:  There are not too many practices performing BSP anymore; and the BSP test is less sensitive than bile acids.  Since our normals for bile acids are
 set by our laboratory at <10 and <15 for fasting and fed bile acids, the variance in normal dogs in our lab is quite small. There are different
 normals for different labs- perhaps that is what concerns people?  Anyway,
 if the values are over 10 and over 15 in our lab, the results are abnormal.  As with any liver function test, all this tells us is that there is something going on with the liver- it doesn't tell us what.