Letter to the Editor
Appropriateness of the Use of Serum Ferritin or Serum Transferrin Saturation as a Diagnostic Tool for the Evaluation of Anemia
Abstract
To the Editor:
We read with great interest the paper by Ioannou et al which was recently published in the Southern Medical Journal1. In this article, the authors tried to identify the clinical predictors that led to laboratory evaluation of iron deficiency anemia in 637 consecutive anemic patients admitted to the general medicine services of two teaching hospitals, as well as to determine whether specific clinical variables predicted subsequent endoscopic evaluation. Iron deficiency was diagnosed in 102 patients, and among them only 31 (31%) underwent endoscopic evaluation. As the authors indicate, this is a relatively low percentage which needs to be significantly improved. However, as the same group showed in 2002, this can be difficult: although the implementation of a simple guideline to perform endoscopic evaluation in patients with a serum ferritin level <45 ng/mL enhanced the appropriateness of the evaluation of iron deficiency anemia, the overall frequency of proper evaluation remained low.1
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