Iron Deficiency Anemia among Children with Febrile Seizures Presenting at CMH Muzaffarabad

Abstract

Background: Febrile Convulsions (FC) are convulsions that occur in children aged 6 months to 5 years old with a 38°C or more body temperature that are not caused by a Central Nervous System (CNS) illness or any metabolic imbalance and are not preceded by afebrile seizures. This syndrome affects 2-5 percent of children who are otherwise healthy neurologically. Although the exact etiology of FC is unknown, various genetic and environmental variables have been linked to it. Objective: To find out the prevalence of iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) is in children who have febrile seizures at CMH Muzaffarabad. Study Design: Descriptive, cross-sectional study. Settings: Department of Pediatrics, CMH Muzaffarabad. Duration: Study duration was six months from July 2020 to December 2020. Methods: A total of 200 children presenting with diagnosed febrile seizure (already diagnosed cases), aged between 6 months to 5 years and both genders were included. Detail history and laboratory investigations were done for the confirmation of febrile seizure in the included children. A 5 cc blood sample was taken from the included each child and was sent to hospital laboratory for the diagnosis of Iron deficiency anemia. All the laboratory investigation were performed by an expert pathologist having at least 3 years of experience to avoid any bias. IDA was labeled as positive if the concentration of hemoglobin less than 10 gm/dl, MCV less than 70 fl and the level of serum iron less than 22 μg/dl. All the data were recorded in Performa and SPSS version 26 was used for the analysis. Results: Average age of the study subjects was 2.27 ± 1.24 years males were in majority 60.0% with ratio of male to female as 1.5:1. Overall hemoglobin average was 9.68±2.39 g/dl, serum ferritin average was 11.02±3.78 µg/L and overall serum iron average was 4.76±1.09 µmole/L. Among children having febrile seizure, the iron deficiency anemia was found in 59.50%. Conclusion: The frequency of Iron deficiency anemia was observed to highly frequent among children who were presented with febrile seizure.