Publication:

A study of anemia profile in a research hospital in Telangana, South India

Background Anemia is widespread public health problem with 1.62 billion people affected globally.  In India, Anemia is considered a major health problem. Children, women of child bearing age and pregnant women are more prone to develop anemia. Anemia affects the physical and mental growth of children, associated with increase maternal and fetal mortality, leads to reduced work productivity in adults. The present study was undertaken to determine prevalence and severity of anemia among patients who attended the outpatient clinics of a Unani research hospital in Telangana.

Methods This hospital based retrospective observational study was conducted from January 2020 to December 2020 to investigate the prevalence, type, and determinants of anemia. The complete haemogram values of all the patients who underwent haemogram investigation were noted, information was compiled, tabulated, and analysed. Descriptive statistics were computed with percentages, mean, standard deviation, and student’s t-test was used find the significance of study parameters.

Results Prevalence of anemia was 26.2% (872/3326), high prevalence of anemia was observed in females (44.04%) compared to males (5.72%) (p<0.0001). The prevalence was more in reproductive age group (58.6%). Moderate anemia (58.6%) was more prevalent followed by mild anemia (36.6%). Microcytic hypochromic blood picture predominates with the incidence of 53.6% followed by normocytic blood picture 42.2%.

Conclusions Results confirmed high prevalence of anemia in females and moderate anemia being more prevalent followed by mild anemia and majority of anemia cases were microcytic, suggesting iron deficiency as the main cause of anemia.