RED CELL DISTRIBUTION WIDTH (RDW) AS A DIAGNOSTIC TOOL FOR CHRONIC VENOUS INSUFFICIENCY

Abstract

Introduction Chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) is a chronic inflammatory disease and biomarkers are defined to be used as predictive biomarkers for CVI patients. Red cell distribution width (RDW) is a measure of heterogeneity of erythrocytes in circulation. With this study we aim to investigate the relationship between RDW and CVI classification Materials and Methods 102 consecutive patients with lower extremity venous Doppler ultrasound were evaluated for the study. The Doppler ultrasound results, hematological and biochemical laboratory results were obtained retrospectively from hospital medical records. The study population was divided to chronic venous insufficiency group and control group according to Doppler ultrasound results. Chronic venous insufficiency group also classified according to clinical findings of CEAP classification Results A total of 102 patients were included in the study. Mean age of the study population was 52.3 ± 14.6 and 54 (52.9%) was male. 25.5% of the patients were included in CVI group and 74.5% of the patients were included in the control group. 21.6% (n=26) of the study population was classified as Class 1, 44.1% (n=45) was classified as Class 2 and 8.8% (n=9) of the patients were classified as Class3 according to the clinical findings of the CEAP classification. RDW was significantly higher in venous insufficiency group compared to control group (p=0.02). The pairwise comparison of Class 1 to Class 2 was 0.150, Class 1 to Class 3 was p=0.125 and Class 2 to Class 3 was 0.05. Conclusion Our results propose that RDW may be used as a diagnostic tool for CVI but severity of CVI cannot be determined by RDW.