Lecture 3 Flashcards
What is haemodynamics?
Movement of blood around the body. Blood is modelled as a fluid.
What is the difference between serum and plasma?
Plasma contains anticoagulants-prevent clotting.
Centrifuged: (from bottom to top)
RBC’s, buffy coat (WBC’s), plasma (containing clotting factors)
Serum does NOT contain anticoagulants.
What is viscosity?
Thickness of blood.
Does whole blood viscosity change?
It is uncommon.
Some diseases increase the viscosity (making it thicker)
-polycythaemia (RBC’s- increased conc of Hb in blood due to increase in RBC’s or reduction of plasma)
-thrombocythaemia (more platelets)
-leukaemia (WBC’s-cancer)
Lead to thick sludgy blood which can lead to dry gangrene in peripheries
Does plasma viscosity change much?
Minor changes are more common than whole blood changes, as can be raised by inflammation etc.
-changes due to acute plasma proteins
(CRP, fibrinogen)
What is measured to indicate inflammation?
Levels of CRP (C-reactive protein)
What order of vessels does the blood flow through?
Aorta, arteries, arterioles, capillary, venules, vein, vena cava
It moves from high to low pressure.
What are the types of blood flow?
Laminar flow: organised, streamline fashion, smooth, no energy lost. SILENT. (Moves quickest in the centre of the vessel due to less resistance)
Turbulent flow: disorganised, irregular movement, energy lost. NOISY ( can be cause due to obstruction of diameter of vessel or vessel branching)
What is the rate of flow compared with pressure in turbulent/laminar flow?
Laminar flow: as pressure increases, flow increases directionally proportional to it.
Turbulent flow: once it reaches a critical point, the flow is not directionally proportional to the pressure. The flow increases at a slower rate compared to the pressure.
What is flow?
Volume transferred in a particular time (L/min)
-it is pulsatile
What is pressure?
Force being applied for a measured area (mmHg/pascals)
How do you link flow and pressure?
Flow= K(change in pressure)
K- conductance (ease of flow) ( hard to calculate mathematically so we use resistance)
What is resistance?
Measure of difficulty of flow
Reciprocal of K (1/K)
What is Darcy’s Law?
Flow = change in pressure/resistance
Therefore a change in resistance or pressure causes a change in flow. Mainly resistance.
By rearranging Darcy’s Law how do you work out resistance?
R = change in pressure/flow (the difference of pressure needed to move one unit of flow)
Resistance is inversely related to flow. As resistance goes up, flow goes down.
Therefore as you increase pressure, the resistance increases.
At high resistance, the flow decreases.
What contributes most to resistance?
Diameter (most important as length doesn’t change and viscosity is kept within a narrow range), length, viscosity of the fluid
-any small change in the radius will have a large effect (constriction/dilation)
Why is there a large pressure jump between the arteries and arterioles?
Due to large change in resistance
- arterioles play largest role in regulating TPR
- resistance in aorta is low (large diameter and short)