Iron status & Oral Iron therapy

In this step, Prof. Chen clarifies how to check the iron status of patients and how to execute good oral iron therapy.

To begin with, if the patient don’t have enough iron level, their anemia can’t be corrected even with suitable supplement of EPO.

Therefore, checking a patient’s TSAT or TIBC level of serum ferritin is important at the beginning of therapy.

Given the table on the third slide, as a pharmacist, we need to remember how much elemental iron included in different formula. Formulations and the dose for iron therapy depend on elemental iron, so we must do the calculation correctly.

For oral iron therapy, if patients start to experience some adverse drug effects, we have to encourage them to divide the dose of iron into different doses in a day.

Finally, remember to tell the patients not to take the iron with antacid or tetracycline.

Have you ever monitored the Iron status in clinical practice? Please share your experience below. If possible, you can share which country you’re in as well.