Thalassemia: Sensitivity and Specificity

Introduction: Thalassemia is in the differential diagnosis of a microcytic anemia. The two other categories of microcytic anemia are Iron Deficiency Anemia and Anemia of Chronic Disease. There are a number of different 'indices' that one can use to distinguish IDA from thalassemia (see below), but iron studies / ferritin are probably more accurate.

I have chosen to simply paste in references here because the numbers are rather discordant among the studies.

J Trop Pediatr. 2007 Apr;53(2):93-7. PMID: 17166936

J Int Med Res. 2009 Jan-Feb;37(1):25-30. PMID: 19215670

Pediatr Int. 2002 Dec;44(6):612-6. PMID: 12421257

Ann Hematol. 2007 Jul;86(7):487-91. PMID: 17476506

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Differential Diagnoses include: Iron Deficiency Anemia

The sensitivity and specificity of findings for Thalassemia are listed below. See the left navigation bar to change the display.

Findings With Unspecified Accuracy

Finding	Sensitivity	Specificity	Comments, Study
England and Fraser Index	No accuracy specified.		Study: no study specified.
Shine and Lal Index	No accuracy specified.		Study: no study specified.
RDW, decreased	No accuracy specified.		in thalassemia, the RDW tends to be normal to decreased (whereas it tends to be increased in iron deficiency) Study: no study specified.
Mentzer index	No accuracy specified.		Study: no study specified.
Srivastava Index	No accuracy specified.		Study: no study specified.
Green and King Index	No accuracy specified.		Study: no study specified.