Nephrology
 A Randomised Trial of Intravenous versus Oral Iron Supplements for Post-Transplant Anaemia in Renal Transplant Recipients
Professor David Johnson
Post-transplant Anaemia remains a significant problem in renal transplant recipients, and has recently been associated with cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in a large study. Post-transplant anaemia is multi-factorial, but probably contributed to, in part, by iron deficiency.
We have recently noticed that 2 dialysis patients who received intravenous iron infusions and then coincidentally happened to receive kidney transplants shortly afterwards, maintained normal haemoglobin levels after transplantation.
Oral iron supplements are poorly absorbed and frequently associated with adverse GI effects which limits patients’ compliance with the treatment.
We postulate that a single intravenous iron infusion at the time of transplantation, may ameliorate the post-transplant anaemia, and possible reduce cardiovascular events in such patients, and seek to test the hypothesis in a randomised controlled trial
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