CHANGES OBSERVED IN BLOOD CORPUSCLES AFTER PROLONGED PERFUSIONS WITH TWO TYPES OF BLOOD PUMPS

Abstract

This communication relates to a series of experiments which suggest that prolonged perfusions with reasonably atraumatic blood pumps (oxygenator absent) may result not only in the outright or prompt desturction of a certain fraction of the red cells initially present, (as manifested by the appearance of free plasma hemoglobin), but also in the infliction of significant damage upon other erythrocytes short of outright desturction, followed by premature senescence of the cells and anemia. That such sublethal damage with delayed red cell breakup may occur during prolonged partial heart-lung bypass has been shown by Brinsfield et.al.⁽¹⁾ and Galletti⁽²⁾. Erythrocyte injury of a similar nature, presumably occurring in consequence of continued mechanical traumatization of red cells, has also been reported in certain patients with implanted prosthetic heart valves⁽³⁾ and other intracardiac prosthetic devices ^{(4, 5)}. A pump induced leukocytes is, the precise mechanism of which has not yet been established, has also been consistently encountered during and after long perfusions with a mechanical blood pump.