Safety, efficacy, cost analysis and acceptability of Intravenous Ferric Carboxymaltose for treatment of Iron deficiency anemia in a tertiary care centre

Iron deficiency remains the leading cause of anemia worldwide with significant negative impact on health.Iron repletion options available are oral and  Intravenous(IV) formulations.Though oral iron is considered the first line of therapy for treatment of Iron deficiency anemia(IDA) due to its low cost,good safety profile and ease of administration it’s absorption is affected by several factors and incidence of gastrointestinal side effects can lead to lack of adherence to therapy and poor efficacy.This has led to emergence of intravenous iron therapy which is clearly superior to oral iron with higher increment of hemoglobin levels and rapid replenishment of iron stores.Ferric Carboxymaltose (FCM) is a novel non dextran intravenous iron form which has been approved for patients with iron deficiency who have had inadequate response to oral iron therapy,intolerance to oral iron or non dialysis dependent chronic kidney disease.The safety and efficacy of using FCM in treatment of iron deficiency anemia has been demonstrated in several clinical trials.It has been shown to be non inferior to other intravenous iron formulations with a good safety profile.In spite of it’s efficacy it has been seen that FCM’s acceptability is low and use is limited. No such study has been done in this part of the country.It is not supplied under any national programme. The project aims to quantify efficacy and cost to study its feasibility and find reasons for it’s low acceptability.