Do We have Enough Direct Evidence to Postulate that Abnormally Shaped Red Blood Cells Impair Microvascular Blood Flow in Critical Conditions?

Sergey B Zaets

doi:10.4172/2161-0940.1000e122

Abstract

abnormal RBCs were produced in-vitro but not as a result of a real critical condition. The conclusions received in these two studies were confirmed in “pure” in-vivo experiments by Machiedo et al. [18]. The authors performed exchange transfusion in rats with blood obtained animals rats subjected to trauma-hemorrhagic shock or to sham shock. The reduced RBC deformability in rats that experienced traumahemorrhagic shock and normal RBC deformability in those who were subjected to sham shock was confirmed by laser ektacytometry. However, the authors did not investigate RBC shape in transfused blood. It was demonstrated that microvascular blood flow in the lungs, spleen, and intestine measured by radioactive microsphere technique was significantly lower in rats subjected to the infusion of traumahemorrhagic shock blood than in those that were infused with sham blood.

Highlights

Stomatocytes and echinocytes produced by adding chlorpromazine or sodium salicylate, respectively, to normal Red blood cells (RBCs) demonstrated altered passage through circulation [2]
Experimental studies demonstrated that the number of abnormal RBCs after hemorrhagic shock was increased more than five times compared to control values and their proportion to normal discocytes exceeded 30% [5,13]
The question comes if we have enough direct evidence to postulate that abnormally shaped RBCs impair microvascular blood flow in critical conditions?

Summary

Introduction

Do We have Enough Direct Evidence to Postulate that Abnormally Shaped Red Blood Cells Impair Microvascular Blood Flow in Critical Conditions? In-vitro studies using micropore filtration technique demonstrated that normal RBCs (discocytes) have an optimum shape for the flow in microvessels. Smaller number of publications report RBC shape changes as a result of critical conditions [5,11,1215].

Results

Conclusion