Abstract

BACKGROUND:
Chronic liver disease is a major health burden on both parents and the child with a high morbidity and mortality rate, with different etiological causes: infectious, autoimmune, metabolic, vascular, drugs and some are idiopathic. Chronic liver disease is associated with many hematological abnormalities, particularly anemia, which result from combination of decreased oral intake and chronic blood loss from esophageal varices, portal hypertensive gastropathy or coagulopathy                     and thrombocytopenia.
AIM OF THE STUDY:
To study the prevalence and types of anemia in children with chronic liver diseases by clinical and laboratory findings.
METHODS:
A prospective study has been done in gastroenterology / Hepatology ward in Children Welfare Teaching Hospital for 73 children, aged 6 months to 14 years, with the diagnosis of chronic liver disease, over a period of 18 months, from 1^st January 2019 to 31^st June 2020, the patients were evaluated for their clinical manifestations of chronic liver disease and assessment for the presence of anemia, they were submitted to serial laboratory investigations:- Complete blood count, liver function test, coagulation study, serum iron, serum ferritin, and total iron binding study.
RESULTS:
The studied sample includes, 30 females (41%) and 43 males (59%), mean age of study sample were 6.6±3.7, 2_9 years high frequency age group, there were 36 (49%) children who had chronic liver disease found to have anemia, microcytic type (66.6%) from anemic patients with chronic                           liver disease. There were 16.4% from cases with mild anemia and 32.6% with moderate anemia.
CONCLUSION:
Microcytic, and specifically iron deficiency type of moderate severity anemia, was the most prevalent one. Children with chronic liver diseases aged > 9 years were more prone for anemia                 but there was no sex predominance.