New Trends in Current Implementation of Rheological Technologies for the Human Blood

During the last ten years the number of the in vivo! ex vivo techniques in haemorheology have considerably increased and in spite of a consensus meeting held in 1986 (International Committee for Standardization in Haemorheology, ICSH,1986) little improvment can be noticed at the present time. It appears that the number of proposed tests remains high, as many of them are obsolcle and/or no longer commercially available. Cataloguing the different tests, coming out'of all rheological laboratories all around the world, is extremely difficult. One can however distinguish the public techniques (viscosity, viscoelasticity, red cell aggregation, deformability), which can be obtained from manufacturers and the private or "wild" techniques only settled inside research laboratories. Of importance is: viscosity, filtration, ektacytometry, micropipettes and in vitro flow systems (Tableau 1).