Is It Time to Redefine Iron Deficiency?

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Hi, everyone. This is Ileana Piña. I'm filming today from Jefferson University at the Kimmel School of Medicine, where I will be in a part-time job as quality chief for the cardiovascular line.

We've chosen today to talk to you about a topic that we see a lot in heart failure patients, and that's iron deficiency. There's been a lot written by the Europeans about iron deficiency, telling us, don't only look at the hemoglobin to make this diagnosis of iron deficiency, but take a look at the ferritin and take a look at the transferrin. And if the ferritin is below 100 ng/mL or if it's a little bit higher, then look at the saturation of transferrin (TSAT). That's how you're going to make the diagnosis.

Now, why is that important? Because anemiaand low iron really do affect patients. There's more fatigue, there's less ability to exercise, and there’s just this loss of well-being. We have now turned to using IV iron quite commonly because we know that the oral iron that we're so accustomed to giving — iron sulfate — doesn't really get absorbed very well. I've had patients on iron sulfate for years, and nothing much has changed.