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1Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Los Andes, Bogota, Colombia; and 2Department of Bioengineering, University of California-San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0412
Submitted 11 August 2003 ; accepted in final form 6 November 2003
In this study, we assessed the magnitude of the erratic deviations in the radial position of red blood cells (RBCs) in the laminar flow regime of arterioles in a hamster window preparation and the intraluminal PO2 profile to determine whether this variability affects the intraluminal distribution of oxygen in conditions of normal hematocrit and hemodilution. A gated image intensifier was used to visualize fluorescently labeled RBCs in tracer quantities and obtain multiple measurements of RBC radial and longitudinal positions at time intervals on the order of 5 ms within single arterioles (diameter range 4095 µm). RBCs in the velocity range of 0.314 mm/s exhibit a mean coefficient of variation of velocity of 16.9 ± 10.5% and a SD of the radial position of 1.98 ± 0.98 µm. Both quantities were inversely related to hematocrit, and the former was significantly lowered by hemodilution. Our experimental results presented very similar values and shape compared with the intraluminal oxygen profile derived theoretically for normal hematocrit, suggesting that shear-augmented diffusion due to the measured radial displacement of RBCs did not significantly affect oxygen diffusion from blood into the arteriolar vessel wall. PO2 profiles in the arterioles assumed an increasingly parabolic configuration with increasing levels of hemodilution.
arterioles; red blood cell trajectories; shear-induced particle diffusion; intraluminal oxygen profiles
This article has been cited by other articles:
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P. Cabrales, A. G. Tsai, P. C. Johnson, and M. Intaglietta Oxygen release from arterioles with normal flow and no-flow conditions J Appl Physiol, May 1, 2006; 100(5): 1569 - 1576. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
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