Vitamin D3 Testing

Shyboy

Hi There,

I suffer from low Vitamin D3 for the past few years. Usually my Vitamin D3 levels come back as <15 and the GP gives me a Vitamin D shot of 300,000 IU which works wonders. I have just gone to him to have my twice yearly test and he tells me that GP's can no longer test for Vitamin D, you have to go through a consultant. Is this for real?

NickyL

I was tested for many things including Vitamin D in August with no issues.

El_Dangeroso

I was told my local hospital lab no longer does it, so my GP can run it but they will charge 40 euro.

There is no reason a consultant needs to be involved to order a vitamin d test.

But if you are consistently very low then maybe your GP wants you to go to a consultant to see if there's an underlying cause.

Dingle_berry

El_Dangeroso wrote: »

I was told my local hospital lab no longer does it, so my GP can run it but they will charge 40 euro.

Your local lab probably never did it but covered the cost of sending it to a private lab. Which I would guess they are no longer willing to do.

There is no reason a consultant needs to be involved to order a vitamin d test.

Labs can refuse tests unless they are OK'd through the clinical director of the lab to prevent misuse, waste of resources, etc. a pretty common one is requests for blood groups from people wanting to start that diet.

Most public clinical labs have their Pathology User Manuals on their website. It tells you what tests are availabe, requirements, etc.
If you do get Vit D tested, a lab that uses a mass spectrometry method is preferable to other methods like ELISA. I think the Mater and St James have the Mass Spec method

El_Dangeroso

I knew they guy who worked in the lab of my local hospital, they definitely did it, but he did say they were inundated with requests so maybe that influenced the decision.

ch750536

http://www.betteryou.com/dlux3000