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Old Wed Apr 15, 2009, 04:58 AM
Birgitta-A Birgitta-A is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Posts: 1,918
Iron overload

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
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