The new St George’s blood filtrometer

Abstract

A new commercially available blood filtration apparatus is described, which can be used with whole blood, red cell or white cell suspensions. The apparatus is interfaced to a computer which automatically analyses sequential flow rates and thus distinguishes between cell transit time and pore clogging rate. A series of validation experiments carried out in three different laboratories by the authors show that results are comparable and reproducible. The apparatus is sensitive to detecting small subpopulations of hardened cells or small changes in the filterability of all the cells.