Status of adolescents with symptoms of iron deficiency in Ukraine

The aim: The purpose of this research was to study the reasons adolescents are underdiagnosed in iron deficiency in Ukraine.

Materials and methods: We provided a data analysis of medical records on the reasons and frequency of requests for medical assistance among teenage children, including the age group10-19 years. The group of exclusion criteria included patients with traumatic brain injury, burns, eye diseases, congenital abnormalities of development, childhood infirmities, persons who had contact with radiation, oncological patients, patients who had surgery within the last 3 months. Moreover, the researched cases were provided by private medical institutions as we needed to compare the laboratory tests, which are not available in governmental primary care institutions. In this research were used such key methods as basic data analysis, correlation-analysis and summarizing of gathered results.

Results: The number of referrals dominated initially to ENT (36.8%), family physicians (25.6%) and pediatricians (23.3%), with a nearly equal distribution of patients by gender. From all the cases there were 162 cases where clinical laboratory blood test was performed (56,8% male, 43,2% female). The distribution among specialties of doctors, who prescribed a blood test was: 64,2% family doctors , 9,3% ENT, 20,4% pediatricians, 6,1%- other specialists. Serum ferritin was discovered in 22 cases. They were found in 19,1% and there was no correlation between inflammation changes and number of erythrocytes, hemoglobin and qualitative signs of red blood cells.

Conclusions: The analysis of medical records revealed the expediency of the syndromic distribution of causes of treatment, as well as the identification of risk groups and early diagnosis of pathologies among adolescent children in the practice of a family doctor. A fifth part of adolescent patients appointments was made up of healthy individuals, of whom (69.5%) belonged to the age group of 10-13 years. Inflammatory changes in the blood are not related to the amount of hemoglobin, erythrocytes and erythrocyte characteristics. Hemoglobin, hematocrit and erythrocyte counts are not informative in the diagnosis of iron deficiency.