Background: Whole blood viscosity (WBV) is the resistance of blood flow in blood vessels. Increased WBV may be a cardiovascular risk factor. The proper screening of WBV can help the early detection of cardiovascular disease. We investigated the performance of a new scanning capillary tube viscometer (SCTV) for the measurement of WBV.
Methods: We evaluated the total precision of the SCTV for 20 days using three control viscosity materials, and the within-day precision with the whole blood samples of three different individuals. For the linearity evaluation, serial dilutions of a high concentration standard material were used. For the method comparison, the results of the SCTV method were compared to those of Brookfield rotating viscometer on 227 subjects.
Results: The SCTV had good within-run and total-run coefficient of variant (CV)s at low-, medium-, and high-concentration samples, at shear rates of 1 and 300 s(-1). The within-day CVs with the three human blood samples were 6.3%, 3.7% and 3.8% at a shear rate of 1s(-1), and 3.2%, 3.0% and 4.1% at a shear rate of 300 s(-1). The SCTV method showed an excellent linearity in the range of 84.9 to 558.2 milliPoise (mP) and 28.8 to 71.0 mP at shear rates of 1 and 300 s(-1), respectively. For the comparison study, the SCTV and the rotating viscometer showed comparable results.
Conclusions: The SCTV showed a stable analytical performance, and was comparable with the rotational viscometer. This new SCTV method can be used in the clinical laboratory for various needs.
Copyright © 2012 The Canadian Society of Clinical Chemists. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.