Suguna Maroju, Anuradha Vutukuru and Attili VS Suresh

Objective: This is a retrospective analysis to investigate the prevalence, nature [Like megaloblastic vs Iron deficiency vs blood loss vs hemolytic etc.] and determinants of anemia among women in a tertiary care hospital during the period 2011-2014. We examined differences in anemia related to, urban/rural location, nutrition status as reflected by body mass index (BMI) and serum albumin levels and hemogram values

Methods: The Hb values of all women presenting to the OPD was captured along with the details of the Haemogram, Iron profile, as well as other clinical examination findings. Wherever the complete work up was performed, the details were also captured. The standard definitions were used for entering the data and MEDCALC version 7.0 was used for the statistical analysis.

Results: A total of 463 women aged 15–59 were analyzed. (Elderly were not included as the etiologic of the anemia will be different in them as well as multiple co-morbidities confounding the analysis) Prevalence of anemia was high among all women, however as compared to national statistics; this is slightly less in the current study. In all 28.4% of women had mild, 12.6% had moderate, and 5.2% had severe anemia. Both high and low BMI were associated with anemia, though very low BMI had mixed picture, Low BMI had Iron deficiency and high BMI had Megaloblstic variants of anemia.