%0 Journal Article %T Prevalence of Preoperative Anemia in Elective Rheumatic Valve Surgery at a Tertiary Care Center in Nepal %A Priska Bastola %A Bibhush Shrestha %A Bishwas Pradhan %A Arjun Gurung %A Basanta Ghimire %A Anil Bhattarai %J World Journal of Cardiovascular Surgery %P 1-9 %@ 2164-3210 %D 2023 %I Scientific Research Publishing %R 10.4236/wjcs.2023.131001 %X Background: Rheumatic Valvular Heart disease (RVHD) is common in developing countries often associated with anemia; however its burden is often overlooked. Anemic patients undergoing surgery are likely to receive blood transfusion, increasing morbidity and mortality. Prevalence of anemia in cardiac surgical patients are studied extensively, however its burden in RVHD is lacking. This study attempted to investigate the prevalence of preoperative anemia in RVHD and its effect on blood transfusion, morbidity and mortality in patients undergoing valve surgery. Methods: This is a retrospective observational study conducted at a tertiary care hospital in Nepal. We considered 340 patients who underwent Rheumatic valve replacement surgery from 2014 January to December 2016 and data on their socio-demographic and clinical characteristics were extracted from the patient¡¯s records. The analyses meeting the study objectives were conducted using IBM SPSS v25 for Windows (IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences, 2015IBM Corporation, New York, United States). Results: The prevalence of no anemia, mild, moderate, and severe anemia was 34.1%, 57.7%, 39.6%, 2.5%, respectively. The units of Red Blood Cell used for transfusion were 1.2 units, 2.0 units, 2.3 units, and 1.6 units in patients without anemia, and those with mild, moderate and severe anemia respectively. The incidence of reexploration was higher in patients w