Association of Repeated Phlebotomy and Anemia in Patients Admitted to Intensive Care Unit of Urmia Emam and Ayatollah Taleghani Hospital in 2012-2013

Anemia is one of the common clinical problems of hospitalized patient in ICU ward that has different etiology. Repeated phlebotomy for laboratory evaluation can be one of the etiologies of anemia in ICU patients that wasn’t known clearly yet. The other causes are inflammation، chronic disorders and gastrointestinal bleeding. In this study we evaluated of the effect of repeated phlebotomy in hemoglobin range in patients admitted to intensive care unit of Urmia Emam Hospital. In this retrospective study we evaluate the clinical records of 841 patients from March 2011 to march 2012 who were admitted to intensive care unit Emam Khomeini and Ayatollah taleghani hospital. 641 hospitalized patients were excluded from study because they had not inclusion criteria’s and only 200 patients were enrolled in the study. The collected clinical date’s from the medical records were included sex، underlying disease، serum hemoglobin level of first and seventh day of admission، mean number and volume of blood sampling during seven days of hospitalization. Anemia was occurred in all of the 200 hospitalized ICU patients. The mean serum hemoglobin level of patients in the first and seventh day of admission was 12. 85 ± 4. 53 gr/dl and 11. 18 ±4. 6 gr/dl respectively. There was no significant relationship between age and sex of patients with serum hemoglobin level. The mean decreased level of hemoglobin in male patient after seven days of admission was 1. 7 gr/dl vs 1. 6 gr/dl in female patients. There was no relationship between underlying disease and degree of decreased hemoglobin. Our study revealed that recurrent blood sampling in ICU patients can causes anemia and it has a negative correlation with mean volume and the number of blood sampling. Repeated phlebotomy can induced Anemia in ICU patients، then it is better to avoid from unnecessary blood sampling as much as possible.