Background: Anemia during pregnancy is an important risk factor of morbidity and mortality. Anemia especially if severe is directly or indirectly responsible for 40% of maternal deaths. Iron supplementation programmes are most practical short term approach to alleviate the problem. The present study aim to compare the effect of daily versus supervised single dose weekly oral iron supplementation, so that compliance is almost 100%, on haematological parameters in pregnant women.

Material & Methods: This is a prospective study of 200 women, attending antenatal clinic of department of obstetrics and gynecology, P.B.M. hospital and AG group of hospitals, S.P. medical college, Bikaner (Rajasthan). The women were randomly allocated in to two groups; one receiving daily and other receiving supervised single dose weekly iron supplementation. After taking informed consent, complete history and physical examination, all 200 pregnant women were subjected to routine antenatal investigations. Apart from routine antenatal investigation, detailed haematological work up was also done.

Results: In our study observed that difference of haemoglobin levels at baseline and at time of final sampling is find to be statistically insignificant (p>0.05). When the serum feeitin levels are compare between group A and group B, the difference at baseline is find to be statistically insignificant (p>0.05) whereas the difference in serum ferritin levels after 3 months oral iron supplementation is find to be statistically highly significant (p<0.05). In our study showed that haematological indices in group A and group B at the initiation of iron supplementation are comparable to each other. P value are not significant and after 3 month of iron supplementation there is no significance difference in haematological indices except in MCHC.

Conclusion: Our study concluded that weekly supervised iron therapy is cheaper, easy and more compliant & also has slightly better results than unsupervised daily iron therapy for prophylaxis of anemia.

Keywords: Iron supplementation, Anaemia, Hematological parameters, Pregnant.

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Dr Ruchi Saxena

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