Evaluation of Types of Anemia among Malnourished Children Using Blood Film Examination

Abstract

Background Malnutrition is one of the most common serious diseases in the world, in which it carry high morbidity and mortality rates. and most of those children commonly exposed to anemic, for many reasons  like low iron, folic acid,vit B12 in the food, also impaired absorption due to presence of  chronic illnesses or parasitic infestations. Anemia most commonly measured as grams of hemoglobin per liter of blood.              
Cutoffs to define anemia are 11 gram per dl for children 6-59 months  .  Aim: To find the types of anemia using blood film examination in malnourished children
Patients and Methods: A case control  study was done in Tikrit Teaching Hospital and Aldour city during the period from thirteen of june 2013  to first of October 2013.,The total number of cases was (100) diagnosed as malnutrition ,70 of them was anemic . Another 100 normal  weight children of same age was taken as control ,54 of them was anemic. The age of the children included in this study was between (2) months and (5) years.      Blood film examination was done to all children included in this study (malnourished and control cases ). Also the clinical signs and symptoms of malnutrition  was assessed for each child ,which include the mid upper arm circumference, weight per height ,weight per age, height per age and occipito-frontal circumference 
Results: The study revealed  that there was a significant relation between the age of children and the malnutrition in which most of cases were under six months of age in malnourished cases(48,6% ), and there was significant relation between the types of feeding and malnutrition in which most of cases were on mixed feeding in malnourished cases(37,1%) versus (9,3%)in control cases, and there was a significant relation between  the(mid upper arm circumference, occipito-frontal circumference) and malnutrition
Conclusion: There was a significant relation between the the level of MCV,MCH and MCHC in malnourished cases in comparison to control cases.