Microcytic Anemia: Summary

00:01 Beautiful table here for you to take a look at.

00:02 It summarizes all of your microcytic anemias.

00:07 Here they are, iron deficiency.

00:10 What you’re seeing here in green is quite important for you to pay attention to.

00:13 But you should be able to walk through each and every single one of these labs.

00:19 And once you do, I’m not going to go through this again.

00:20 But all of this go through the green ones.

00:24 Iron deficiency, there is going to be increased in red blood cell distribution width.

00:26 What does that mean? No uniformity, all different sizes.

00:30 And with iron deficiency anemia, you will find increase in total iron binding capacity because the ferritin is decreased.

00:36 Anemia of chronic disease, here you will find either normal or increased ferritin.

00:45 The opposite of iron deficiency anemia.

00:46 Why might it would be increased? Remember anemia of chronic disease, give me the 2 categories that you will this in? Good.

00:53 It will either be in normocytic and may remain there.

00:58 Or it might be microcytic as we see here.

01:01 Thalassemia, iron studies are normal and your RBC count maybe perhaps increased but usually it will be variable so be careful there.

01:10 And red blood cell distribution width will be increased here.

01:13 Otherwise, take a look at your iron studies thalassemia.

01:14 Yeah, perfectly normal, alpha or beta, right? Next, sideroblastic, what does this mean? Give me the most common acquired? Good. Alcohol.

01:25 Give me the one in which maybe a child or a baby was crawling towards paint chips and eating it.

01:31 Good. Lead poisoning.

01:34 And what if there is a patient that have tuberculosis taking INH without B6? Good, there it is, INH poisoning, right? And what’s the rate-limiting enzyme in the porphyria pathway? ALA synthase and genetically, you might be missing that.

01:50 You’ll begin with iron overload for the most part.

01:51 Okay, remember ring sideroblasts.