Optimisation of microdialysis sampling recovery by varying inner cannula geometry

In vitro microdialysis recoveries of glucose were evaluated and optimised by varying the inner cannula dimensions for a concentric type microdialysis probe. The recovery was shown to be significantly dependent on the outer radius of the inner cannula (r alpha). Increasing r alpha by 50% while holding all other microdialysis variables constant caused a 26% increase in recovery under the conditions tested. Mass transport modeling of microdialysis sampling showed that the magnitude of the recovery change in response to changes in r alpha may depend on other experimental variables such as effective dialysis length, membrane dimensions, membrane type and medium composition. These data indicate that microdialysis recovery may be substantially improved by optimising the outer diameter of the inner cannula. These data also suggest that in order to fully characterise and compare data from microdialysis experiments, r alpha should become one of the reported variables.