Severe macrocytic anaemia in pregnant women in the Gold Coast with records of 100 cases, and with some reference to hypochromic anaemia

Abstract

Macrocytic anaemia of a severe kind is not uncommonly met with in practice among pregnant women on the Gold Coast.

In both treated and untreated cases there is marked tendency to premature labour with stillbirth or death of the infant in the first week of life. The maternal mortality rate also is undoubtedly high in untreated cases. After delivery recovery may be rapid if the anaemia, is not too far advanced. If it is severe, then death rapidly supervenes.

Macrocytic anaemia is a disease that responds rapidly and satisfactorily to treatment with liver or liver extract, administered par - enterally and in adequate doses.

The more important predisposing factors are unsatisfactory diet, intercurrent disease, especially malaria, and hypochromic anaemia.

From her own observations the writer has found some degree of anaemia to be very common among pregnant women. See Tables 3 and 4, pages 208 & 212. Prevention of the condition is bound up with improvement in the general standard of living of the people. In the meantime the obstetrician must be constantly on the alert to detect and treat all patients with low haemoglobin values, in the expectation that by so doing severe anaemia may be successfully prevented from appearing.