Impaired red cell deformability has been found in patients suffering from chronic peripheral vascular disorders, the implication being that microcirculatory blood flow is hindered and tissue hypoxaemia is aggravated. Measurement of erythrocyte deformability by a standard filtration technique for whole blood was carried out in 40 young healthy persons, in 25 untreated patients with peripheral occlusive arterial disease and in 25 patients with matching vascular disease, before and after a 6-weeks' oral treatment with 400 mg pentoxifylline 4-times daily. The filtration rates were significantly lower in the patient groups compared to those of healthy volunteers. After the oral administration of pentoxifylline, a significant increase in filtration rates was observed pointing to an improvement in erythrocyte deformability. The findings suggest that by improving erythrocyte deformability pentoxifylline positively influences the microcirculatory blood fluidity, an important factor for efficient therapy in peripheral arterial occlusive disease.
Function of microcirculation depends largely on the fluidity of blood. The study aimes with the influence of risk factors and coagulation phenomena on blood flow in capillaries typical for chronic occlusive arterial disease. (COAD) Investigations of blood fluidity base on passage rates of EDTA-anticoagulated blood through a 5,um micropore filter system in simulation of capillary conditiones. The flow rates in COAD show marked decrease of erythrocyte flow compared to healty subjects (1,8 ± 0,2 and 2,9 ± 0,3 ml/min). With heavy smoking, hypercholesteroT- and hypertriglyceridemia the flow rates in otherwise healty persons accord with those in COAD. After normalisation of lipids flow rates are normalised. Isolated coagulation phenomena typical for hypercoagulability in COAD result in significantly reduced flow rates whereby a decreased fibrinogen level has no influence on blood fluidity. The data point to the necessity of therapeutic elimination of aforementioned risk factors as well as improvement of erythrocyte fluidity and removal of hypercoagulabi1ity in COAD. Therapeutic oral administration of pentoxifylline in COAD disclosed improvement of erythrocyte fluidity (flow rates before/after: 1,7 ± 0,3 to 2,5 ± 0,3 ml/min), decrease of platelet hyperreagibi1ity and plasmatic hypercoagulation as well as an increase of fibrinolytic activity of the blood.
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