When to do first Ferriscan?

Hi, My child has about 7 transfusions now and they are recommending her first ferriscan (she is almost 9 months and would be about 10 months at the date they want to schedule her).
This seems early to me?
Does anyone have any comments on this?

Its too early to do ferriscan (my opinion). The child has to be still for 20-25 minutes during the test, sometimes the child has to hold the breath for accurate results. How you are going to do that for 10 month old baby, unless they want baby to put to sleep (not recommended). Even iron chelation would not start after about 1 year of transfusion. I would question the need for ferriscan at this stage. Is this a private hospital where they feed on patient or family money (I am not suggesting they are) but sometimes they can use this tactics.

We did the 1st Ferriscan at age 2, before starting chelation. My child was under anesthesia for the procedure. If you can avoid anesthesia I highly recommend it. It is very hard to see your child out under anesthesia even though the procedure itself is non invasive. Now we go for the SQUID at Oakland which does not require anesthesia or the need to be very still.

Even SQUID is too early for 10 month old baby.

Premature and basically an abuse of our health care system. Yeah, insurance will pay and unfortunately, that often matters more than whether or not a procedure is necessary.

Thanks for the feedback guys. They were saying they would need to give her anesthesia to keep her still which I am against at this point. Too young.

Good decision Syeda. Wait till your child is at least two years old. In my opinion,  doing Ferriscan before starting chelation is a good idea and chelation should be started only after the child is 2 yrs or older.