[Functional morphology of endonasal blood capillaries]

Harvey (1628) was the first to describe the blood circulatory system. 50 years later, the capillary system was discovered by Marcello Malpighi as a link between arteries and veins. Since then, the microvascular network has been examined abundantly by means of various morphological and physiological techniques. During the last decades the development of the technical equipment enabled us to receive detailed informations on the structural and ultrastructural aspects of the vasculature and--particularly--the capillary endothelium. New electron microscopic investigations on the behaviour of this special cell system. In the present study we combined our own morphological results on the endonasal microcirculatory system--using different morphological techniques--to interpret these anatomical finding under functional aspects.