Abstract

PARENTERAL VERSUS ORAL IRON THERAPY FOR THE PREVENTION AND TREATMENT OF CANCER CHEMOTHERAPY INDUCED ANAEMIA

Kaushal J.*, Goyal R. and Kaushal V.

ABSTRACT

Background: Head and neck cancers are among the 10 most frequent cancers in the world. During treatment of cancer patients with chemotherapy, schedule of chemotherapy is disturbed by development of chemotherapy induced anaemia which necessitates the supplementation of iron that can be given orally or parentally. Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate and compare the effects of parenteral iron vs oral iron in the prevention and treatment of cancer chemotherapy induced anaemia. Methods: This was a prospective, randomized, comparative, open label, parallel study conducted on 60 patients having histopathologically proven head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. In this study 60 treatment naïve patients of head and neck cancer were divided in two groups, parenteral iron and oral iron group. The effects of treatment were compared using various parameters such as hemoglobin, RBC count, reticulocyte count, peripheral blood films and red cell indices. Results: The results showed that parenteral iron led to lesser fall in hemoglobin, reticulocyte count, MCV, MCH, MCHC, PCV and RBC count as compared to oral iron, less incidence of anaemia at 3 weeks which was more evident at 6 weeks. Conclusion: This study showed that cancer chemotherapy led to anaemia in all patients and supplementation of iron along with cancer chemotherapy had a preventive as well as therapeutic effect on chemotherapy induced anaemia. Parenteral iron provided more benefit as compared to oral iron.

Keywords: Cancer, chemotherapy, oral iron, parenteral iron.