Tissue hypoxemia can lead to an increased respiratory

Tissue hypoxemia can lead to an increased respiratory rate to compensate for lack of oxygen to
the tissues along with changes to the liver, heart, and kidneys, and central nervous system.
Anemias are classified by the cause of the reduction in erythrocytes. “Iron deficiency
anemia (IDA) is the most common type of anemia throughout the world… in both developed and
developing countries” (Huether & McCance, 2017, p 517). Iron is important to the body not
only for the production of hemoglobin, but also to help your body maintain healthy cells, skin,
hair, and nails (American Society of Hematology, 2018). IDA can be caused by blood loss or by
inadequate intake of iron. The body recycles the iron it has, so it is important as an advance
practice nurse to find out why the body does not have enough iron. Iron you eat is absorbed by
the cells in the gastrointestinal tract where is it attached to a protein called transferrin. This
protein then transfers the iron to the liver where it is stored as ferritin until it is needed by the
body (American Society of Hematology, 2018). Only a small portion of the iron we eat is
actually absorbed (American Society of Hematology, 2018).
Chronic inflammation anemia or anemia of chronic disease (ACD) “is the second
most common type of anemia after iron-deficiency anemia” (Agarwal & Prchal, 2009). It is
caused by inflammatory cytokines and characterized by low iron in the blood but high iron in the
macrophages as they phagocytose the old erythrocytes but are unable to release the iron back
into the liver (Agarwal & Prchal, 2009). This type of anemia is prevalent in patients with chronic
illness, cancer, autoimmune disease, and chronic kidney disease (Sun, Vaja, Babitt, & Lin, 2012).
Iron-deficiency anemia is caused by behaviors such as eating low iron diet, drinking
excessive amounts of milk which can block the absorption of iron, or from bleeding issues such

as heavy menstruation, surgery, peptic ulcers, GI bleeds, or trauma. It can be acute of chronic.
Chronic Inflammation Anemia is caused by disease and would not be affected by behavior, age,
or gender unless the underlying disease process is affected by those factors.
References
American Society of Hematology. (2018). Iron-Deficiency Anemia. Retrieved from
Agarwal, N. & Prchal, J.T. (2009, January 1). Anemia of Chronic Disease (Anemia of
Inflammation). Acta Haematologica 122 (2-3), pp 103-108. doi: 10.1159/000243794
Sun, C.C., Vaja, V, Babitt, J.L., & Lin, H.Y. (2012, April). Targeting the hepcidin–ferroportin
axis to develop new treatment strategies for anemia of chronic disease and anemia of
inflammation. American Journal of Hematology 87 (4), pp 392-400. doi:
10.1002/ajh.23110
Heather,
Thank you for the very informative post. Anemia of chronic inflammation (ACI) is
classified as a normocytic-normochromic anemia which is characterized by erythrocytes that are
relatively normal in size and hemoglobin content but insufficient in number (Huether &
McCance, 2017). High levels of hepcidin are responsible for ACI (2017). I chose to discuss
pernicious anemia in this week’s discussion.