Correlation Assessment between Serum Ferritin with Liver and Heart MRI in Sickle Cell Patients

Chronic blood transfusions are effective in preventing both initial and recurrent strokes in patients with sickle cell disease (SCD). Individuals with high iron burden are at significant risk for end organ damage and death due to cardiac and liver complications. For this reason patients receiving chronic blood transfusions are placed on the iron chelator desferrioxamine. Monitoring body iron content is critical for clinical management of patients with iron overload. The objective of this study was to evaluate if there is a correlation between serum ferritin level with the liver and heart MRI results.
Subjects and This study was a cross-sectional study based on the demographic and the patient’s laboratory and imaging results including age, sex ,serum ferritin, hemoglobin, heart and liver MRI T2*. Analysis after determining the sample size required to estimate the correlation between ferritin or hemoglobin using re-sampling method .To detect the correlation between serum ferritin and MRIT2* heart or liver in sickle cell disease the Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficient was used.
Although, there was no significant correlation between hemoglobin and heart and liver MRI T2*, but there was significantly inverse correlation between serum ferritin and heart and liver MRI T2* in sickle cell anemia patients.
To better evaluate the iron overload of liver and heart in sickle cell anemia patients, measurement of serum ferritin or MRI T2* is suggested and can be used instead of each other in some circumstances.