Anemia in Pregnancy

Anaemia is the commonest medical disorder in pregnancy and has varied incidence, etiology and degree of severity in different populations, being more common in third world countries .Various studies have come up, which have compared the efficacy of intermittent iron supplementation with conventional daily iron supplementation. Parenteral iron therapy is a safe and effective method of treatment of anaemia in a hospital set up. It ensures 100% compliance but can cause side effects like staining of skin, pain at injection site, injection abscess, arthralgias, fever, anaphylaxis etc. In some studies of oral versus parenteral iron supplementation not only were the side effects less and compliance better with parenteral iron, haemoglobin rise was also significantly higher than oral therapy.