You may have up to a pint taken at a time.
You’ll visit your doctor’s office or a hospital once or twice a week to have your blood drawn. Blood removal is divided into two parts: initial treatment and maintenance treatment. The goal is to remove some of your blood so that your iron levels return to normal. The blood flows through the needle and into a tube that’s attached to a bag. Your doctor will insert a needle into a vein in your arm or leg. If you have primary hemochromatosis, doctors treat it by removing blood from your body on a regular basis. This is a scan that uses magnets and radio waves to take a picture of your organs. They’ll look at it under a microscope to see if there’s any liver damage. Your doctor will take a small piece of your liver. If either of these shows you have more iron than you should, your doctor might order a third test to see if you have a gene that causes hemochromatosis. This test measures the amount of ferritin, a protein that stores iron, in your blood. This shows how much iron is stuck to transferrin, a protein that carries iron in your blood. Two tests can give your doctor a clue about hemochromatosis: They might also tap on different parts of your body.īlood tests. This involves using a stethoscope to listen to what’s going on inside. They might also ask about things like arthritis and liver disease, which might mean you or someone in your family has hemochromatosis but doesn’t know it. They’ll ask about your family and if anyone has hemochromatosis or signs of it. There are some other ways your doctor can figure out if you have it:Ĭhecking your history. You have one of the problems listed above.It can be tricky for your doctor to diagnose hemochromatosis, because other conditions have the same symptoms. That’s because vitamin C helps your body absorb iron from food. If you take a lot of vitamin C or eat a lot of foods that contain it, you can make hemochromatosis worse. Erectile dysfunction (trouble having an erection).Liver problems, including cirrhosis (scarring) of the liver.Sometimes people don’t get any symptoms of hemochromatosis until other problems arise.
Pain in your joints, especially your knuckles.That may be because they lose iron when they get their periods and give birth. Women often don’t show signs of this condition until they’re over 50 or past menopause. In men, symptoms tend to show up between ages 30 and 50. Up to half of people who have hemochromatosis don’t get any symptoms. Men are 5 times more likely to get it than women. White people of northern European descent are more likely to get hereditary hemochromatosis. Secondary hemochromatosis happens because of other conditions you have. If you get two of the genes that cause it, one from your mother and one from your father, you’ll have a higher risk of getting the disorder. Primary hemochromatosis is hereditary, meaning it runs in families. There are two types of this condition - primary and secondary. If it’s not treated, hemochromatosis can make your organs stop working.
So, your body stores the excess iron in your joints and in organs like your liver, heart, and pancreas. But in hemochromatosis, your body absorbs too much, and it has no way to get rid of it. Normally, your intestines absorb just the right amount of iron from the foods you eat. Hemochromatosis is a disorder where too much iron builds up in your body.
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