Prevalence of Anemia in Chronic Kidney Disease

Abstract

Objective: Chronic kidney disease is usually associated with anemia and the level of anemia correlates with the severity of the renal failure. The kidneys help in maintaining electrolyte balance and blood pressure. They produce the active form of vitamin D and a substance called erythropoietin, which stimulates production of red blood cells. Chronic kidney disease has adverse consequences on almost all body systems resulting in high rate of complications i.e. anemia, cardiac, vascular pulmonary etc. This study was carried out to evaluate the prevalence of anemia in chronic renal failure patients. Material and Methods: It is across sectional study and the data was collected from department of pathology and dialysis unit of Dr. Akbar Niazi Teaching Hospital, Islamabad from January 2021 to December 2021. All the patients who presented with sign and symptoms of chronic kidney disease were included in the study. Data was recorded in specially designed proforma and statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 21. Results: Total 89 chronic kidney disease patients were included in the study among them 58 (65%) were males 31 (35%) were females. The average age of patients was 55 ± 16.409. Based on eGFR values the CDK patients that belonged to stage 1-5 were 5% (n=4), 6% (n=5), 9% (n=8), 18% (n=16) and 63% (n=56) respectively. The prevalence of anemia in chronic kidney disease patients was 95.5% (n=85) among which 62% (n=56) were males and 32% (n=29) were females. Normocytic normochromic anemia was the most common type with prevalence of 72% (n=64). Mild anemia was recorded in 41(46%) of the CKD patients while severe anemia was recorded in 3(3%) of patients. Besides CDK, diabetes mellitus was present as a comorbid feature in 4 (5%) of the patients, 16 (18%) had positive history of hypertension and 1 (1%) was positive for cardiovascular disease. Conclusion: Mild degree of anemia was seen in CKD patients. Most common type of anemia was normocytic normochromic. Most of the patients presented at stage 5. Comorbidities associated in CKD patients were hypertension, diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease.