LETTER
Iron deficiency anaemia: further education regarding the British Society of Gastroenterology guidelines is required
Department of Gastroenterology, University Hospital of Coventry & Warwickshire, Walsgrave, Coventry, UK
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr T Iqbal
Department of Gastroenterology, University Hospital of Coventry & Warwickshire, Walsgrave, Coventry CV2 2DX, UK; tariq.iqbal@uhcw.nhs.uk
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The publication of the iron deficiency guidelines in 20051 and the adoption of iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) as a 2-week referral criterion by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence lower gastrointestinal (GI) cancer guidelines2 should have focused attention on this historically poorly managed condition. There is evidence from the primary care literature of poor adherence to previous IDA guidelines.3 In order to evaulate adherence to the new IDA guidelines in our trust, we undertook a short prospective audit of all patients admitted in 1 month through the medical admissions unit of a large teaching hospital in central England.
The initial phase of this study focused on two questions with regard to diagnosis of anaemia: (1) was serum ferritin measured in patients with microcytic anaemia and (2) were all patients with unexplained IDA assessed serologically for coeliac disease?
We evaluated 995 medical patients admitted during October 2006. Using a haemoglobin cut-off
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