Hi Chris,
Most doctors only look at the ferritin value and the liver tests, that increase when there is too much iron. Then the prognosis of the patient is important - they don't start chelating therapy if the patient has a very severe disease.
I have had MRI of the heart and liver to examine iron overload. At that time I had got 44 units of packed red blood cells and had no traces of iron overload in the heart or liver. MRI is not so common as far as I understand but I live in Sweden, where we have the highest taxes in the world and no one looks at the costs of treatment or examinations.
Do you mean biopsy of the liver? I think you risk bleedings and that liver biopsy should only be done in clinical trials where they look at the effect of different iron chelators.
Hope your relative will have a positive effect of EPO
!
Kind regards
Birgitta-A