Could Iron Deficiency Anemia affect Cardiac Functions among Portal Hypertensive Patients?

Abstract

Anemia is one of the earliest and common complications of portal hypertension in children. It is responsible for a significant amount of morbidity resulting in poorer quality of life and is an important risk factor for the development and progression of cardiovascular complications. The severity of anemia increases with more advanced portal hypertension. It is one of the major causes of fatigability, reduced exercise tolerance and left ventricular hypertrophy. Based on the physiological significance of oxygen transported to myocardial tissue, anemia may be a cause of more severe cardiovascular diseases or a sign of other severe diseases that occur in the body. The physiologic response to anemia is a compensatory increase in cardiac output in order to maintain adequate oxygen delivery. It has reported that myocardial contractility would decrease when hemoglobin was below 7 g/dL and chronic anemia would result in increased LV end-diastolic pressure as well as decreased functional reserve. Patients with iron deficiency anemia (IDA) can present with symptoms that result from hypoxic functioning as dyspnea progressing to breathlessness at rest, vertigo, syncope, headache, tachycardia and cardiac systolic flow murmur.