Iron is an essential part of hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying component of blood. Ppl with iron deficiencies tire easily from the lack of oxygen.So when you lose a lot of blood in a surgery, you will be on iron supplements in the hospital because you lost a lot of blood.my physiology understanding is a little off. maybe you can explain the whole hemoglobin/iron thing to me again and why a patient would be on iron after surgery. what exactly would it do? raise RBCs? Hemoglobin/hematocrit? how?
When you lose blood, you're obviously losing hemoglobin and thus iron. Iron uptake is upregulated but this can only increase intestinal absorption so much. So, for the same reason that women require more iron (because of menstrual blood loss), post-op patients need more iron for hematopoeisis.
blood loss during surgery means that the oxygen being delivered to the body will be compromised. you need iron supplements after surgery to increase the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood so that oxygen in the body will be kept at a normal range. once the body have regained the blood supply that was lost (through hematopoeisis), iron supplements would be unnecessary. this case applies to the scenario of a surgical patient though.
Iron is a component of the haemoglobin molecule, but the body's reserve stores of iron are tiny. When there is a significant blood loss the body needs extra iron to manufacture the extra haemoglobin. What happens otherwise is that red cells are manufactured with less than the normal complement of haemoglobin.
When you lose blood, you're obviously losing hemoglobin and thus iron. Iron uptake is upregulated but this can only increase intestinal absorption so much. So, for the same reason that women require more iron (because of menstrual blood loss), post-op patients need more iron for hematopoeisis.
blood loss during surgery means that the oxygen being delivered to the body will be compromised. you need iron supplements after surgery to increase the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood so that oxygen in the body will be kept at a normal range. once the body have regained the blood supply that was lost (through hematopoeisis), iron supplements would be unnecessary. this case applies to the scenario of a surgical patient though.
Iron is a component of the haemoglobin molecule, but the body's reserve stores of iron are tiny. When there is a significant blood loss the body needs extra iron to manufacture the extra haemoglobin. What happens otherwise is that red cells are manufactured with less than the normal complement of haemoglobin.
