[Hypoferraemia and serum ferritin (author's transl)]

The wide use of serum iron determination by automatic analysers may lead to low values being taken as evidence of iron deficiency. Determining serum ferritin concentration in such cases provides rapid and reliable information to distinguish between reactive hypoferraemia and iron deficiency hypoferraemia, as demonstrated in tests on 71 patients with reproducible hypoferraemia. In 31 patients there was reactive hypoferraemia, in 40 iron deficiency hypoferraemia.