Anemia is when the number of red blood cells or the amount of hemoglobin in a unit volume of peripheral blood is lower than normal. Anemia may be characterized by pallor of the skin and mucous membranes, including lip color, pallor of the nail bed, chronic anemia or mild to moderate anemia, and often asymptomatic.
When we get the medical examination form, we can see an important index - hemoglobin content.
This value can intuitively reflect whether the child is anemia, usually more than 6 months of children, the amount of hemoglobin as long as it is more than 110g / L is normal, if it is lower than this value, then the child may have anemia.
Iron deficiency is a common cause
Iron is the main component of hemoglobin synthesis, and anemia caused by decreased hemoglobin production due to iron deficiency is called trophic iron deficiency anemia, which is the most common cause of anemia in children. Iron plays an important role in the transport, release, and transport of hemoglobin oxygen. Children with iron deficiency anemia may have loss of appetite, mental malaise, inattention, increased heart rate, weakened immunity and susceptibility to infection.
Iron deficiency anemia occurs mostly in infants and young children from June to 2 years old, when the baby grows rapidly, breastfeeding does not provide enough iron, and complementary foods are added less, resulting in insufficient intake, resulting in iron deficiency anemia.
Children entering kindergarten or preschool are relatively unlikely to occur at this age, unless they are particularly picky eaters, usually consume very little iron-containing food, or have chronic diarrhea and abnormal intestinal absorption function.
Nutritional iron deficiency anemia is preventable. Children in infancy need to add complementary foods in a timely manner, gradually add iron-rich foods, and dynamically follow up growth and development; for young children and school-age children, it is necessary to actively remove the causes of iron deficiency, supplement iron treatment, encourage balanced nutrition, and correct bad habits such as anorexia and partial eating in children.
This anemia can be inherited
In addition to iron deficiency anemia, there is also a type of anemia that is often overlooked by parents.
Hematology clinics often encounter children who come to consult on anemia, and some of them may have found anemia due to a kindergarten physical examination, and the child does not have any symptoms. Another subset of children may have fluctuations in haemoglobin levels, such as mild anemia during a "cold" that heals spontaneously after recovering from infection.
Other infants continue to administer iron for a period of time and find that anemia cannot be completely corrected. This type of anemia is easy to ignore and may be another common type of anemia - thalassemia.
Thalassemia, a common congenital hereditary anemia, is highly prevalent in southern mainland China, including Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan and other places, and is also the most common diagnosis of another type of small cell hypochromic anemia in childhood.
While determining hemoglobin levels, attention needs to be paid to erythrocyte morphology. Each blood count is analyzed for erythrocyte morphology, including mean hemoglobin volume, mean hemoglobin content, and mean hemoglobin concentration. If these three items are reduced to varying degrees, thalassemia may still be diagnosed even if the haemoglobin content is normal.
Although thalassemia is the most widely distributed and cumulative single-gene genetic disease in the world, mild or carrier-like patients do not affect growth and development and physical health, do not require treatment, and do not improve or worsen with age. So parents do not have to worry because the child has a genetic disease, in fact, the child's genes are inherited from the parents, that is to say, one of the parents is mild thalassemia or carrier.
If parents are carriers, they may inherit the poor gene to the child at the same time, at this time the child will be thalassemia major, severe anemia will occur after birth, and long-term blood transfusion and iron removal treatment is required, but complete cure needs to be transplanted.
In general, for children's anemia, parents need to do a good job, do not blindly supplement iron, check clear is the key. People diagnosed with mild thalassemia or carriers can be treated with iron supplementation if they are combined with iron deficiency; if there is no evidence of iron deficiency, the only good thing to do is eugenics.