Shahida Tasneem, Nadra Sultana, Ayesha Snover, Kinza Alam.
Clinical utility of Red blood cell count, Red cell distribution width: will it provide more accurate differentiation of Beta thalassemia trait and Iron deficiency anemia in pregnancy?.
Rawal Med J Jan ;41(4):424-7.

Objective: To test clinical utility of red blood cell count, red cell distribution width (RDW), along with these previously used indices in differential diagnosis in Beta thalassemia trait (BTT) and iron deficiency anemia (IDA). Methodology: This was cross sectional study, performed at Department Gynecology, Rawal Institute of Health Sciences, Islamabad, Pakistan for 18 months from January 2013 to July 2014 on 95 patients with microcytic anemia (MCV <82) in pregnancy. Eighteen patients were excluded due to incomplete data. Serum ferritin was checked for all patients. Patients with ferritin level <15mg/dl were labeled as IDA. Those with ferritin >15 were further evaluated by Hb electrophoresis to diagnose thalassemia trait. CBC parameters i.e. Red blood cell count, Mean Corpuscular volume, Mean Corpuscular hemoglobin, Mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration, Red cell distribution Width were compared in both IDA and BTT groups. Results: Out of total 77 patients, 50 were IDA and 27 patients BTT. Prominent erythrocytosis was feature of BTT group (P <0.05). While, RDW was not found significantly different in two groups. Conclusion: Increased RBC count was found to increase the sensitivity of CBC in differentiating between IDA and BTT.

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