Anemia in surgical patients

Abstract

Objective: To find out prevalence of surgery related anemia in the patients routinely admitted in a general surgical ward. Design: Prospective, Cohort Study. Place of study: Surgical Unit II, Jinnah Hospital, Lahore. Materials and methods: 100 studied patients included males and females of all age groups from 13 years to 70 years. They were assessed for the effect of surgery on the preoperative hemoglobin levels and causes of anemia in relation to socioeconomic status. Results: Total of 100 patients were randomly selected for the study but after applying exclusion principles, 95 patients were left with mean age of 33 years, mean hemoglobin concentration of 8.66 in all and 8.79 after excluding the patients with massive blood losses post trauma/gunshot. Mean postoperative hemoglobin excluding trauma patients was 8.71. 52% of patients had anemia due to nutritional deficiency, of which 82% were females; followed by 31% related to chronic diseases and the rest due to acute blood loss. Conclusion: Anemia is still one of the major co-morbidities in preoperative patients and we found that surgical procedures did not cause significant difference to hemoglobin levels postoperatively. Almost all the patients who had low hemoglobin had it preoperatively and that was found to be caused most commonly by nutritional deficiency followed by chronic diseases. They are more prevalent in people from socioeconomically deprived groups of society.