Despite regularly using iron-chelating agents, the mean
ferritin level in our patients was 3138 ng/mL, which is almost
three times the desired level of 1000 ng/mL. However, 31%
of our patients had serum ferritin levels ,2000 ng/mL, and
only 10% of patients had levels .5000 ng/mL. The mean
pretransfusion Hb amount (9.21 g/dL) was near to the desired
level of 9.5 g/dL. Thus, our patients received PRBCs in
nearly adequate amounts, but the iron chelation could not
be achieved as desired.