In this paper, we consider a perishable inventory control model under an (r, Q) review policy, i.e. at every unit time, the inventory position is monitored and a replenishment of size Q is made if the inventory position hits r. The lifetime of products and the lead time are an integral number of the unit time. We derive approximate expressions of the key operating characteristics of the inventory system (such as the expected quantity of perished products, the expected shortage and the expected inventory level) and obtain a closed form expression of the average total cost per unit time. The effectiveness of approximations is tested by a simulation experiment implemented in Arena software. A numerical analysis is developed to illustrate the advantages of using the proposed policy compared to the classical (r, Q) policy which ignores the perishability of products.