Evaluation of serum Ferritin level in patients presenting with dysphagia: A hidden marker to diagnose Plummer Vinson syndrome

Abstract

Objective:
1) To evaluate the serum ferritin level in patients presenting with dysphagia.
2) To determine the frequency of low serum ferritin in Plummer Vinson syndrome

Methods: Cross sectional study conducted in Department of Otorhinolaryngology and Department of Chemical Pathology, Sheikh Zayed Hospital, Rahim Yar khan from November 2022 to September 2023. Patients between 20 to 60 years of age, both genders, presenting with dysphagia in outdoor were included and subjected to the estimation of serum ferritin level and barium swallow to diagnose Plummer Vinson syndrome. Data was collected on predesigned proforma for different variables. Serum ferritin level was estimated on chemiluminescence based immunoassay analyzer in serum sample and low ferritin level was labelled on the basis of cut-off provided by the manufacturer i.e., 8ng/ml. Effect modifiers controlled through stratification and post-stratification chi square test used to see the statistically significant difference between subgroups. P value <0.05 was taken as significant.

Results: Mean age of the study subjects was 37.79±8.451years and 53(26.1%) were male and 150(73.9%) were females. Of the total 203 study subjects, 22(10.8%) were diagnosed as Plummer Vinson syndrome and among all these cases, 18(81.8%) were having low serum ferritin ≤8.0ng/ml with statistically significant difference between subgroups (p value <0.001). 

Conclusion:
On the basis of our study, it is concluded that serum ferritin level can be a useful marker in patients of Plummer Vinson syndrome and it can help in early diagnosis and management of the patients to prevent its malignant transformation.

Key words:
Serum Ferritin, Dysphagia, Plummer Vinson syndrome