Anemia of Chronic Disease

An important percentage of anemias seen in daily practice does not originate from hematologic diseases themselves. Instead they are anemias that appear during other diseases, usually chronic, long lasting ones, leading to a nonspecific reaction known as Anemia of Chronic Disease.It should be suspected when the patient presents complete blood counts showing just anemia, most of the time with normal leucocytes and platelets and normal size and shaped red cells.
Clinical history usually points to symptoms that raise suspicion of an inflamatory or infectious disease or even a neoplasia (malignant tumor) but, many times patients may be asymptomatic, and anemia is just an occasional finding in a routine exam. In such circumstances one should deepen the investigation searching for possible other system diseases, many times in their initial stages, with few relevant symptoms, in such a way that patients may have not looked for medical attention.
So we´ve got the possibility of liver, renal, thyroid, lung, gastroenterologic and bone diseases that may be benign such as inflamatory or infectious ones, or malignant (tumors of any kind).
The treatment of this kind of anemia is the treatment of the disease that originated it. Once the basic process is brought under control the anemia disappears soon after.

Dr. Fernando Monteiro