CORRELATION STUDY BETWEEN BONE MARROW IRON AND SERUM IRON AND SERUM FERRITIN IN PATIENTS OF MODERATE TO SEVERE ANEMIA

BACKGROUND: Iron deficiency anemia is one of the most prevalent forms of malnutrition. The list of diagnostic tools is quite long starting from the basic hemogram, p.s for comment, reticulocyte count to iron studies including serum ferritin, serum iron, total iron binding capacity. Evaluation of the bone marrow iron stores is the gold standard. AIM: To perform a correlation study between Perl's Prussian blue stained bone marrow aspirate smears and serum iron and serum ferritin. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A descriptive study of Perl's Prussian blue stained bone marrow aspirate smears of 40 adult patients with moderate to severe anemia was performed at the Department of Pathology, Gandhi Medical College, Bhopal. Bone marrow was assessed by Gale's method and correlated with serum ferritin and serum iron. RESULTS: Gale's grading method revealed decreased iron stores in 30%; normal iron stores in 55% cases, and 15% cases had increased iron stores. The co-relational coefficient between bone marrow iron grade and serum ferritin came out to be 0.59 with an F- test value of 55.10. The correlation coefficient between bone marrow grade and serum iron is 0.76 and the F-test value - 117.7. CONCLUSION: Although bone marrow iron grading is still gold standard but there exists a positive correlation between bone marrow iron with serum ferritin and serum iron thus iron status can be assessed by serum ferritin and serum iron, bone marrow being an invasive procedure can be avoided, also it will be helpful where bone marrow examination facility is not available.