Clinical Drug Experience Knowledgebase

At present our current practice is to provide a course of oral iron therapy for those patients with a post-operative haemoglobin which is below normal, but not severe enough to require a blood transfusion. Such a practice is not without side effects from the iron tablets, namely ingestion, nausea, diarrhoea, constipation. There is little evidence in the literature to support the current practice of using iron, with only one small randomised trial suggesting such therapy is unnecessary. We propose to recruit 300 patients recovering from a hip fracture with a post-operative haemoglobin below 11g/l. For those patients willing to enter the study, half will be given oral iron therapy (ferrous sulphate 200mg twice daily) for one month. The haemoglobin will be checked when the patients attends the hip fracture clinic at 6 weeks after discharge.