Guidelines for quantifying iron overload

Both primary and secondary iron overload are increasingly prevalent in the United States because of immigration from the Far East, increasing transfusion therapy in sickle cell disease, and improved survivorship of hematologic malignancies. This chapter describes the use of historical data, serological measures, and MRI to estimate somatic iron burden. Before chelation therapy, transfusional volume is an accurate method for estimating liver iron burden, whereas transferrin saturation reflects the risk of extrahepatic iron deposition. In chronically transfused patients, trends in serum ferritin are helpful, inexpensive guides to relative changes in somatic iron stores. However, intersubject variability is quite high and ferritin values may change disparately from trends in total body iron load over periods of several years. Liver biopsy was once used to anchor trends in serum ferritin, but it is invasive and plagued by sampling variability. As a result, we recommend annual liver iron concentration measurements by MRI for all patients on chronic transfusion therapy. Furthermore, it is important to measure cardiac T2* by MRI every 6-24 months depending on the clinical risk of cardiac iron deposition. Recent validation data for pancreas and pituitary iron assessments are also presented, but further confirmatory data are suggested before these techniques can be recommended for routine clinical use.