Iron Deficiency in the Elderly, the Silent Killer

    Once more our laxidasical healthcare system has struck my family. My favorite aunt, well into her 80's but living independently with her husband and enjoying life, suddenly goes into congestive heart failure. With encouragement from me, she agrees to go to the emergency, gets the urgent intervention to reverse the failure, and is referred to a cardiologist. Keep in mind she had just been to a cardiologist six weeks before and was told everything was fine----but that is another story.     During her stay in the emergency it was found that her blood was down several pints and she was given blood transfusions and arangements made to see both a gastroenterologist and a cardiologist. Six weeks later her cardiologist proclaimed her congestive heart was doing well once again and a colonoscopy by the gastroenterologist showed no cause for blood loss from her colon-----and here is where I get confused!!! -----a gastroscopy was not arranged. Now even fourth year medical students know that when considering iron deficiency anemia in the elderly, malignancy of the gastrointestinal tract should be high on our differencial diagnosis with the colon being the number one culprit and the stomach the number two culprit. So when the number one culprit is ruled out as a cause for this ladies iron defiency anemia, would not the stomach move up from the number two slot to the number one slot as the site for pathology?      This par...
Source: What's Wrong with Healthcare? - Category: Family Physicians Source Type: blogs