Background: The incidence and prevalence of anemia increase with age, particularly in adults older than 65 years, and it is associated with a number of adverse health outcomes (AHO), particularly hospitalizations, falls and mortalities. Given that approximately one-third of these anemias are due to reversible causes, we studied whether the treatment of nutritional deficiency anemia (NDA), namely iron deficiency anemia (IDA), cobalamin deficiency anemia (CDA), and folate deficiency anemia (FDA), improves AHO; and explored whether each NDA had different AHO.
Methods: We reviewed electronic medical records of our internal medicine office patients aged 65 years or older, who had a diagnosis of anemia in a non-acute setting.