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Abstract Background: Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is associated with poor outcomes in many disease processes. There is a paucity of data on the impact of IDA on outcomes of acute pancreatitis (AP) hospitalizations. Our study sought to determine whether IDA is associated with poor outcomes in AP hospitalizations. Methods A retrospective study was conducted utilizing the 2020 National Inpatient Sample database. Patients aged 18 and above who were hospitalized with AP were identified. Demographic and hospitalization data was collected and compared across patients with IDA and patients without IDA. Additionally, data on the rates of complications were also compared and analyzed. Results: A total of 83,154 patients hospitalized with AP were identified. 2,951 of them had a comorbid diagnosis of IDA while the other 80,203 patients were without an IDA diagnosis. IDA patients were more likely to have longer hospitalizations (6.3 vs 5.3 days, p=Conclusions: In the existing literature, studies report an association between general anemia and poor outcomes in AP. Additionally, high red cell distribution width, which can be seen in IDA, has also been reported to be associated with negative outcomes in AP. Our data clearly delineates an association specifically between IDA and worse outcomes in hospitalized IDA patients. The increase in hospitalization costs seen for IDA patients is likely a result of both the longer hospitalizations as well as the increased complication rates.
Abramowitz et al. (Fri,) studied this question.