Prevalence and spectrum of anemia among 3920 pediatric in-patients ? A cross sectional study

Background: Anemia is one the common hematological laboratory abnormality in pediatric practice. To this reason we have studied the prevalence and spectrum of anemia among pediatric in-patients whom were admitted in a tertiary care hospital in Andhra Pradesh. Materials and methods: The present cross sectional study was done in the Department of Pathology at tertiary care hospital for two years. All pediatric patients with anemia due to clinically suspected or proven cases of leukemia were included. Patients with other causes of anemia such as chronic infection and systemic disorders were excluded. The study was based on peripheral smear examination and bone marrow aspiration cytology reports. Clinical details of these patients were recorded. Anemia and leukemias were grouped and classified based on the morphological type of the FAB classification. Data was extracted from patient case records and laboratory reports. Data management was done using Microsoft excel spreadsheet and statistical analysis using SPSS-16. Actual numbers and percentages were used as descriptive statistics. Results: A total of 3920 patients were admitted in pediatric ward. Among them, 212/3920 (5.4%) were being the hematological diseases, 170/212 (80.2%) being anemic due to causes other than leukemia’s and 42/212 (19.8%) were anemia due to leukemia’s. Among the 170 cases, the anemia due to Iron, Folate and B12 deficiency was 163 cases (76.88%) of total cases and seven cases (3.31%) were hemolytic anemia’s. Among these 42 leukemia cases, acute lymphoblastic leukemia’s were 32 (76.2%) AML were 19.04% (8) and CML was 4.76% (2). Conclusion: The commonest type of anemia noticed was the microcytic hypochromic anemia due to nutritional deficiency, followed by macrocytic anemia. 20% anemias were due to leukemias. The commonest acute leukemia noted was ALL (L1 type). There is seasonal raise of anemia incidences was also noticed between June and September, of which cause is not known. Nutritional anemias can be preventable and treatable effectively through better mother and child health care policies.