Prevalence of Iron Deficiency Anaemia among Chronic Heart Failure Patients in Owerri, Nigeria.

BACKGROUND

Heart failure (HF) is defined as a clinical syndrome with symptoms and/or signs caused by a structural and/or functional cardiac abnormality and corroborated by elevated natriuretic peptide levels and/or objective evidence of pulmonary or systemic congestion. Iron deficiency (ID) and erythropoietin dysfunction have been demonstrated as the two basic mechanisms for anaemia in HF. Iron deficiency in chronic heart failure (CHF) is defined as serum ferritin < 100 μg/l or serum ferritin 100-299 μg/l +Transferrin saturation < 20%. In the presence of anaemia, ID is considered iron deficiency anaemia (IDA). This study aimed to evaluate the prevalence of IDA in patients with chronic heart failure.

METHODOLOGY: This was a hospital-based, cross-sectional descriptive study carried out at Federal Teaching Hospital Owerri, Nigeria. One hundred and sixty (160) HF participants were consecutively recruited in this study. Iron deficiency anaemia was defined by serum ferritin level < 100ug/l or mean cell volume (MCV) < 80% and haemoglobin (Hb) < 10g/dl. The sociodemographic characteristics were obtained through a structured interviewer-administered questionnaire.

RESULTS

Ninety-five (59.4%) participants were males while 65 (40.6%) were females with a ratio of 1.5:1. The mean age of the total participant was 62.82±14.86 years. Of the 160 participants studied, 118 had anaemia with a prevalence of 73.8%. The prevalence of iron deficiency anaemia was 43.8%.

CONCLUSION

The study demonstrated a high prevalence of iron deficiency anaemia among chronic heart failure patients in our environment.