An automated real time physiological viscometer

Abstract

Viscosity as hemorheological criteria has become far more important after the clinicians started to blame it for some pathological conditions. There is a bunch of study showing that the blood viscosity is apparently relevant with erythrocyte aggregation, endothelial damage, intimal thickening, coronary artery disease (angina pectoris), and diabetic ischemia. Besides, there is suspicion of strong association with sudden deafness, sudden vertigo, ischemic retinopaty, aseptic bone necrosis and many other diseases of ischemia.Creating a handy and reliable viscosimeter will be very helpful for both researchers and clinicians that try to investigate the relation between elevated blood viscosity and some disorders. Blood viscosity information is also valuable in monitoring the patient's body reaction to medical treatment. An Automated Real Time Viscometer with the microcapillary tubes was developed using reusable dome transducers, high gain, low noise, low frequency DC preamplifiers, an AD/DA converter card and a PC with appropriate software that can measure flow rate with small scale precision and compute the viscosity values at high speed.The automated real time physiological viscometer is currently assembled in a laboratory room in the Department of Anatomy, İstanbul Medical Faculty - University of Istanbul, with the name of Viscosity Laboratory. It serves as a routine laboratory and accepts patients.Preliminary results obtained indicate that the system can be used for creating reference values and monitoring any kind of diseases with a blood viscosity problem.