Red blood cell distribution width and iron deficiency anemia among pregnant Sudanese women

BACKGROUND: Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is a major health problem during pregnancy and it has adverse effects on the mother and the newborn. Red cell distribution width (RDW), which is a quantitative measure for red cell size variation (anisocytosis), is a predictor of IDA. Little is known regarding RDW and IDA during pregnancy. METHODS: A cross sectional study was conducted at the antenatal clinic of Khartoum Hospital, Sudan, to determine the performance of RDW in the diagnosis of IDA using serum ferritin as a gold standard. RESULTS: Among 194 pregnant women with a gestational period of 21.4 ± 6.5 weeks, 57 (29.4%) had IDA according to serum ferritin levels (<15 μg/l) and 61 (31.4%) had IDA according to RDW (>14.5). The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of RDW where serum ferritin was the gold standard were 43.8% (95% CI: 31.4–57.0%), 73.7% (95% CI: 65.8–80.5%), 41.0% (95% CI: 29.2–53.6%), and 76.0% (95% CI: 68.1–82.6%), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we found that RDW has a poor performance in diagnosing IDA among pregnant women compared with serum ferritin as the gold standard. VIRTUAL SLIDES: The virtual slides for this article can be found here: http://www.diagnosticpathology.diagnomx.eu/vs/1721072967826303