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Background: Anaemia is one of the frequent finding in patients of all age. Proper diagnosis is of utmost important to avoid fatal morbidity in untreated chronic cases. Aims: This study is meant to observe the role of Perls' stain in routine practice in etiological evaluation of anaemia in adults. Methods:Prospective cross sectional study from June 2007 to July 2010. 128 cases of anaemia, alone or as a part of bicytopenia and pancytopenia, in 20-80 years of age, who were recommended by clinicians for bone marrow aspiration analysis after initial routine haematological investigation, were collected as samples. Perls' stain was done on bone marrow smears to estimate marrow iron store in fragments and ring sideroblasts in all the smears.Result: Anaemia was most common haematological presentation(49%), mainly in males (62%) and majority in 20-30 years of age (31.3%). Iron deficiency anaemia was most common cause of anaemia(59.6%) with 0 to1+ iron store. Megaloblastic anaemia, aplastic anaemia, thalassemia and other haemoglobinnopathies, anaemia of chronic disease(AOCD) , myelodysplastic syndrome(MDS) and secondary sideroblastic anaemia(SA) were other causes of anaemia found. 3.2% cases had ring sideroblasts of which 0.78% was MDS and 2.3% was secondary SA. Conclusion:Perls' stain is a cheap and relatively simple test that can be used as a routine test in all bone marrow aspirates to provide provisional diagnosis of some relatively infrequent causes of anaemias which otherwise could be missed when only non invasive methods are relied upon for assessing body iron content.

There are reports of using different materials such as a large bore IV cannula [1], vascular catheter [2], neonatal singlecuff straight catheter (Tenckhoff) [3], angiocath [4] etc. as PD catheters in neonates. Things like vascular catheters and other materials may not be easily available in all neonatal ICUs, but a 2.5 size ETT is an easily available thing in all neonatal settings. As PD can serve as a life-saving procedure at times, in resource constraint situation, one can easily use a 2.5 size ETT as access for PD in neonates as an alternative.

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