ABSTRACT
Objective: The objective of this study was to determine prevalence of iron deficiency anemia during pregnancy in tertiary care hospital of Lahore
Study Design: Cross sectional study
Place and Duration of Study: This study was conducted at the Department of Obs and Gynae, Lady Aitcheson Hospital Lahoreand was completed in 6 months
Materials and Methods: Data was collected using random sampling from 985 females in their last trimester. All pregnant females aged 1 6-40 years during their 3[rd] trimester were taken whereas the pregnant women with known history of thalassemia and sickle cell anemia were excluded from the study. Their demographic information regarding age, gestational age and parity was taken on predesigned Proforma. Venous blood sample was obtained and sent to hospital laboratory for analysis of their hemoglobin [Hb] level. All data was collected by principle investigator
Results: In this study the mean age of all pregnant females was 26.42 +/- 4.55 years with age range of 24 years [16 -40 years]
The average Hb level during third trimester was 9.18 +/- 0.98 with minimum Hb recorded as 4 and maximum Hb as 12. According to WHO classification 93.8% females were anemic and rest of 6.2% females were non-anemic but their Hb was not more than 12 mg/dL. On further classification it was found that 761 [77.3%] had moderate anemia, 157 [15.9%] had mild anemia, and 6 [0.6] were severe anemic. We found insignificant negative correlation of Hb with maternal age [r= -0.009, p-value = 0.767] and found significant positive correlation with number of antenatal visits [ r= 0.090, p-value = 0.005]
Conclusion: Moderate to severe anemia was highly prevalent in our study that may have serious feto-maternal outcomes
Further studies are suggested to address the problem of anemia and its associated causal factors