Iron Therapy In Chronic Renal Failure Patients On Regular Haemodialysis : Guidelines And Effect of Hepatitis Viruses B&C Infections

Abstract

Anemia is one of the major causes of morbidity, mortality and diminished quality of life for dialysis patients (Churchill et al., 1995). LV iron was first administered to haemodialysis patients for treatment of their anemia in 1965 when a policy of stopping blood transfusion was first introduced (Crockett et al., 1967). . With the advent of erythropoitin therapy and its replacement of routine blood transfusion in most hemodialysis patients, classical iron deficiency has become common in this population and it has been recognized as a cause of erythropoitin resistance ( Fishbane et al., 1995 ) , also abnormal iron absorption, external blood loss and functional iron deficiency can explain the high frequency of iron deficiency in dialysis patients (Fishbane et al., 1997). The intravenous route of iron therapy provides iron in a rapidly available from for erythrapoiesis and bypasses some of the problems seen with oral or intramuscular iron (Macdougall, 1999). Recent studies suggest that there is a key link between iron metabolism and the pathophysiology of viral hepatitis (Rubin et al., 1995) and also the hepatitis C virus negative patients seem to achieve higher hemoglobin levels with less erythropoitin requirement in contrast to the hepatitis C virus positive patients despite adequate serum ferritin level (Abdalla et al ., 2000). Aim of the work 1) To study the iron s tus (serum ferritin, transferrin sturation) and haemoglobin levels in chronic renal failure patients on regular haemodialysis before and three months after the application of two reigmens of therapy: • intravenous iron alone.