Red Blood Cell Deformability and its Hemorheological Consideration

적혈구 변형성과 혈액유변학적 고찰

The suspension of hardened red blood cells (RBCs) differs from the suspension of normal RBCs with respect to their rheological behavior. The deformability of normal and hardened RBCs (obtained by heating blood at $49^{\circ}C$ or by incubating RBCs in a solution of hydrogen peroxide) was measured with a slit diffractometer and RBC suspension viscosity was measured with a rotational viscometer. The peroxide-treated RBCs showed a significant decrease of the deformability and their suspension viscosity increased over a range of shear rates. The suspension viscosity of the heated RBCs, however, where the deformability is even lower than that of the peroxide-treated RBCs, was slightly higher than that of the normal RBC suspension in the high shear rates. The present study found that not all rigid cells cause an increase of blood viscosity at high shear rate, and therefore that decreased membrane deformability is not predictive of high-shear blood viscosity.