Abstract
A capillary viscosmeter is described which allows measurement of the shear rate dependency of fresh blood viscosity at low shear rates. The instrument has been used in a preliminary study to evaluate differences between fresh and EDTA anticoagulated blood. In a shear rate range of 0.5 to 1.3 sec−1 the viscosity of fresh blood is more strongly dependent on hematocrit than is the viscosity of EDTA anticoagulated blood. Also, the viscosity of anticoagulated blood is more sensitive to day-to-day variations than is that of fresh blood. For some subjects, such variations may amount to as much as 30%.
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