A 58-year-old female presents in the clinic presenting with fatigue, weight loss, and tingling in her fingers. Laboratory findings show low hemoglobin and hematocrit, a high mean corpuscular volume, and normal plasma iron. These assessment findings are consistent with which type of anemia?

Macrocytic hypochromic anaemia

Explanation:

Anaemia is the decrease in haemoglobin concentration, consequently, there is a reduction in the ability to transport oxygen to cells. Their intervals depend on sex and age, in addition to some physiological states, such as pregnancy.

Anaemia should not be considered as a disease, but as a sign, because it is an indicator that something strange is happening to the body and the blood tells us with anaemia.

The morphological classification indicates the size of the red blood cells by their MCV (Middle Corpuscular Volume). From this value we can distinguish whether the anaemia is normocytic (normal MCV: 80-100 fL), microcytic (low MCV: 100 fL) and this parameter is directly related to hematocrit, which means that if the MCV goes down the hematocrit will also go down.

The 58year-old patient has a macrocytic hypochromic anaemia, due to the low haemoglobin and hematocrit and a high MCV, the fatigue is due to the low amount of haemoglobin (hypochromic) which leads to low oxygen transport throughout the body, in addition to the patient presenting a low amount of red blood cells, this is indicated by the hematocrit. The high MCV tells you that the cells are larger than normal, so they are macrocytic.

This type of anaemias can be caused by lack of vitamin B12, folate, alcoholism, megaloblastic anaemias, liver failure reticulocytosis, hypothyroidism, medullary aplasia or chemotherapy, along with thalassemias, iron deficiency or sideroblastic anaemias, heavy metal poisoning or chronic diseases.