Effect of Red Cell Factors on the Relative Viscosity of Whole Blood

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Abstract
The paper deals with observations of the "relative" blood viscosity in healthy individuals and in patients measured in a conventional U-tube Ostwald type viscometer. There is a characteristic relationship between whole blood viscosity and relative red cell mass, regardless of the size and number of red cells. This relationship is linear for values of the hematocrit up to about 40; with higher hematocrit values, the viscosity increases monotonically to the red cell concentration. Relative viscosity of whole blood is greatly influenced by the size of the red cells, expressed as mean corpuscular volume: microcytosis is accompanied by a decrease of the relative viscosity and macrocytosis is accompanied by an increase. Evidence of the significance of the measurement of relative viscosity in vitro is presented.