Blood viscosity monitoring during cardiopulmonary bypass based on pressure-flow characteristics of a Newtonian fluid.

We proposed a blood viscosity estimation method based on pressure-flow characteristics of oxygenators used during cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) in a previous study that showed the estimated viscosity to correlate well with the measured viscosity. However, the determination of the parameters included in the method required the use of blood, thereby leading to high cost of calibration. Therefore, in this study we propose a new method to monitor blood viscosity, which approximates the pressure-flow characteristics of blood considered as a non-Newtonian fluid with characteristics of a Newtonian fluid by using the parameters derived from glycerin solution to enable ease of acquisition. Because parameters used in the estimation method are based on fluid types, bovine blood parameters were used to calculate estimated viscosity (ηe), and glycerin parameters were used to estimate deemed viscosity (ηdeem). Three samples of whole bovine blood with different hematocrit levels (21.8%, 31.0%, and 39.8%) were prepared and perfused into the oxygenator. As the temperature changed from 37 °C to 27 °C, the oxygenator mean inlet pressure and outlet pressure were recorded for flows of 2 L/min and 4 L/min, and the viscosity was estimated. The value of deemed viscosity calculated with the glycerin parameters was lower than estimated viscosity calculated with bovine blood parameters by 20-33% at 21.8% hematocrit, 12-27% at 31.0% hematocrit, and 10-15% at 39.8% hematocrit. Furthermore, deemed viscosity was lower than estimated viscosity by 10-30% at 2 L/min and 30-40% at 4 L/min. Nevertheless, estimated and deemed viscosities varied with a similar slope. Therefore, this shows that deemed viscosity achieved using glycerin parameters may be capable of successfully monitoring relative viscosity changes of blood in a perfusing oxygenator.