Plasma proteins

The concept of blood fluidity, known from the time of Pouiselle, entered the clinical world when it became possible to measure in some way blood viscosity and when clinicians could understand that the non-Newtonian properties of blood depend on the different blood components (Fig. I). Everybody can easily see that a simple increase of one of the components (number of cells, amount of fibrinogen or of proteins) can cause an increase in blood viscosity. Therefore, the simple evaluation of the components can give us information about the behavior of blood viscosity (Table I). activatio