Review
English
Faraj AE 1, Houmsse M 2
1. Department of Medicine, Gradiot Medical Center, MI, USA 2. Department of Medicine, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA
IJMBS 2010;2(1):32-37
Abstract
Despite advances in chronic heart failure (CHF) medical and device therapy in recent years, CHF continues to be a syndrome associated with significant morbidity and mortality (1). Abundance of data suggests that anemia is prevalent in CHF. The pathophysiology of CHF related anemia is complex and not well understood (1,2,3). Earlier small trials did demonstrate improvement in morbidity with use of erythropoietin stimulating agents (ESA) and parenteral iron (4,5,6) but that was not supported by more recent large randomized trial. There is a concern regarding the safety of ESA. Small studies showed benefit of parental iron alone or with combination with ESA. This was promising since parenteral iron is relatively cheap therapeutic intervention to treat anemia in CHF patients. So far there is no clear recommendations regarding the treatment of CHF related anemia. The purpose of this article is to review the up to date epidemiology, pathophysiology, and therapeutic options on anemia in CHF.
Keywords: Chronic heart failure, anemia, erythropoietin and iron
Link/DOI: http://journals.sfu.ca/ijmbs/index.php/ijmbs/article/view/63/127