[Blood filterability in peripheral obstructive arterial disease]

The aim of this paper is to test whether an alteration of blood flow in microcirculation and in particular of red cell deformability is present in chronic arterial occlusive disease. To this end we determined by the method proposed by Reid and Dormandy (J. Clin. Pharmacol. 1976, 29, 855) whole-blood filterability in 18 patients with peripheral vascular disease, in 15 clinically healthy subjects and in 99 subjects without clinical evidence of ischemic pathology displaying one or more vascular risk factors. Blood filterability turned out to be significantly lower in cases of arterial disease that in the controls (p less than 0,001), and we found a constant reduction of blood filterability with the increase of number of risk factors. Comparison of the results obtained in arteriopatics and in controls displaying risk factors shows that though risk factors have an important impact on blood filterability, their presence alone is not enough to explain the reduction of blood filterability which, risk factors being equal, in vascular disease is always significantly lower than in controls. We also found a significant correlation between levels of fibrinogen and reduction of blood filterability.