PURSE 1996

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Browsing PURSE 1996 by Author "Cuncheer, S."

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    Determination of Iron Status in a Rural Population in Sri Lanka: Prevalence of Anaemia and Oral manifestations
    (University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya, 1996-08-10) Ranasinghe, A. W.; Cuncheer, S.
    The study was carried out using a randomly selected individuals from ten Grarna Sevaka divisions of Kadugannawa M 0 H division. A total of 339 patients were used in this study and a detailed questionnaire was administered to record socioeconomic and clinical data of the subjects. Intravenous blood was drawn to assess haemoglobin level, packed cell volume and the blood picture. The data analysis was done using a programme called EPI INFO Version 5. A total of 190 females and 149 of males were screened and their mean ages 49.2 + / - 14.1 and 46.5+ / - 15.6 years respectively. Only 2.7% of the patients were pure vegetarian and more than 85% of the patients consumed either fish. dry fish or chicken. However, around 50% of the group did not consume beef Only 8.3% of the patients gave a history of bleeding from the gastrointestinal tract, however, nearly 14% patients had menorrhgia Almost 50% of the study group had symptoms associated with anaemia. This high figure cannot be attributed purely to anaemia because some of these symptoms were common to anaemia as well as other disorders. e.g. angina. In contrast only 14% of the patients had signs of anaemia and females formed a higher percentage(78%) of this group compared to males(22%). Atrophy of the tongue was the commonest clinical abnormality(15%) followed by angular cheilitis(6.2%) and abnormalities like koilonychia and brittle nails were rare among the patients. Nearly 35.6% of the patients had a haemoglobin level less than 12 g/d1. however, when the cut-off point was lowered to 11 g/dl, the percentage of patients above this value rose to 81.9%. Even at this level nearly 20% of the population were anaemic which is a significant portion of the population and this data demonstrate the value of routine screening for anaemia in populations.