ALLERGIST

CONSULT
GUIDE
Booking your first allergist
appointment for your infant/toddler
 CONSIDER BOOKING
JUST AN ALLERGY
CONSULT FIRST IF...*

Your child has NOT had a serious life

threatening reaction to a food.

You haven't started solids yet with your baby

Your baby's issues are primarily GI tract

related.

You have no history of family allergies.

Your child is under 6 months of age.

*This is general information and not specific to your child.

Please always follow the recommendation of your doctor
 Allergist Consultation Questions

Before your appointment:

Ask the office to give you the cost of skin prick testing vs blood testing (you may
need to call your insurance as well). The reason for asking this is because blood
testing can become quite pricey in some situations and that may factor into how
many foods you decide to test.

At your consultation:
Ask the Allergist what age they typically recommend allergy testing, and after
explaining your situation, whether they would test earlier or later.

Ask whether they typically do blood testing or skin prick on infants and why they
prefer the method they choose.

Tell them your hesitations about doing infant skin prick testing due baby skin
being sensitive and possibly creating false positives.

Ask them if they were to do blood testing, how many foods they would test for at
this time.

If you have suspicions about a particular food, ask them whether just avoiding
that food for the time being and having an epi-pen would be sufficient.

Ask if they can prescribe AUV-Q which is under $30 out of pocket as a safeguard

If you decide to wait on allergy testing, ask them when they would
recommend following back up.
 ALWAYS
ASK
B- what are the benefits?

R - what are the risks?

A - what are the alternatives?

I - what is your intuition telling you?

N - what happens if we do nothing?

Remember: allergy testing can only test for IgE mediated allergies
which are immune responses that typically come on within minutes
or hours (the only exception is FPIES which is triggered within
hours but also will not show up positive on allergy testing).

Your child may test negative after allergy testing but may still have
NON IgE mediated food allergies, better known as "IgG." The good
news is that IgG mediated allergies are often outgrown or can be
resolved through gut healing. You will, however, need to do your
own trial and error of foods to determine what specifically is
triggering a response.