Evaluation of viscoelasticity measurements of human blood.

The dependence on hematocrit of whole blood viscoelasticity must be considered in order to compare pathological blood samples to normal ones. If one wants to calculate the measured values to a standard hematocrit value, the hematocrit dependence for the pathological sample must be available. As the latter however is unknown, the same dependence is assumed for both normal and pathological blood samples. To prove the validity of this assumption, hematocrit dependence of random blood samples from different diseases (cerebral and coronary vascular and myocardial disorders) were investigated. A statistical analysis showed the assumption as invalid. Therefore, it will be recommended to evaluate pathological blood samples at the measured hematocrit