Blood flow, capillary transit times, and tissue oxygenation: the centennial of capillary recruitment

The transport of oxygen between blood and tissue is limited by blood’s capillary transit time, understood as the time available for diffusion exchange before blood returns to the heart. If all capillaries contribute equally to tissue oxygenation at all times, this physical limitation would render vasodilation and increased blood flow insufficient means to meet increased metabolic demands in the heart, muscle, and other organs. In 1920, Danish physiologist August Krogh was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his mathematical and quantitative, experimental demonstration of a solution to this conceptual problem: capillary recruitment, the active opening of previously closed capillaries to meet metabolic demands. Today, capillary recruitment is still mentioned in textbooks. When we suspect symptoms might represent hypoxia of a vascular origin, however, we search for relevant, flow-limiting conditions in our patients and rarely ascribe hypoxia or hypoxemia to short capillary transit times. This review describes how natural changes in capillary transit-time heterogeneity (CTH) and capillary hematocrit (HCT) across open capillaries during blood flow increases can account for a match of oxygen availability to metabolic demands in normal tissue. CTH and HCT depend on a number of factors: on blood properties, including plasma viscosity, the number, size, and deformability of blood cells, and blood cell interactions with capillary endothelium; on anatomical factors including glycocalyx, endothelial cells, basement membrane, and pericytes that affect the capillary diameter; and on any external compression. The review describes how risk factor- and disease-related changes in CTH and HCT interfere with flow-metabolism coupling and tissue oxygenation and discusses whether such capillary dysfunction contributes to vascular disease pathology.

Dynamics in closed and open capillaries

Capillary rise of a liquid displacing gas is analysed for both open and closed capillaries. We include menisci mass and hysteresis, and show that oscillations due to inertia are muted by friction at the advancing meniscus. From single-phase numerical computations in a no-slip/slip capillary, we quantify losses due to entry, flow development, meniscus slip, exit and acceleration of fluid within the reservoir. For closed capillaries, determining viscous drag due to gas requires inclusion of compressibility, and solving a moving boundary problem. This solution is derived through perturbation expansion with respect to two different small parameters for obtaining pressure above the liquid meniscus. Our rise predictions spanning a large range of experimental conditions and fluids for both open and closed capillaries match the data. The experimental data confirm the adequacy of the theoretically constructed dimensionless groups for predicting oscillatory behaviour.

Fabrication of PDMS micro through-holes using micromolding in open capillaries

Micromolding in open capillaries, a simpler method for PDMS through-holes fabrication, whose procedures are easy to handle and observe.

Haematoretinal barrier reaction on combined exposure of ionizing radiationand bright light

The aim of this work was to determine character of modifying radiation influence on damages of haematoretinal barrier components which is caused by light. The study showed that preliminary total x-ray radiation (5 Gy) increases lightning damages (3 500 lx, on the 1-st, 2-nd, 7-th, 14-th, 30-th days) of haematoretinal barrier which manifest by decreased specific square of chorioideas open capillaries, by haemodynamic disorders, reactive and destructive changes of pigmental epithelium. Damages of haematoretinal barrier is of focal character and are mostly l expressed on the areas of retina with massive destruction of neurosensory cells.

Simulation of motor unit recruitment and microvascular unit perfusion: spatial considerations

Fuglevand, Andrew J., and Steven S. Segal. Simulation of motor unit recruitment and microvascular unit perfusion: spatial considerations. J. Appl. Physiol.83(4): 1223–1234, 1997.—Muscle fiber activity is the principal stimulus for increasing capillary perfusion during exercise. The control elements of perfusion, i.e., microvascular units (MVUs), supply clusters of muscle fibers, whereas the control elements of contraction, i.e., motor units, are composed of fibers widely scattered throughout muscle. The purpose of this study was to examine how the discordant spatial domains of MVUs and motor units could influence the proportion of open capillaries (designated as perfusion) throughout a muscle cross section. A computer model simulated the locations of perfused MVUs in response to the activation of up to 100 motor units in a muscle with 40,000 fibers and a cross-sectional area of 100 mm2. The simulation increased contraction intensity by progressive recruitment of motor units. For each step of motor unit recruitment, the percentage of active fibers and the number of perfused MVUs were determined for several conditions: 1) motor unit fibers widely dispersed and motor unit territories randomly located (which approximates healthy human muscle), 2) regionalized motor unit territories, 3) reversed recruitment order of motor units, 4) densely clustered motor unit fibers, and 5) increased size but decreased number of motor units. The simulations indicated that the widespread dispersion of motor unit fibers facilitates complete capillary (MVU) perfusion of muscle at low levels of activity. The efficacy by which muscle fiber activity induced perfusion was reduced 7- to 14-fold under conditions that decreased the dispersion of active fibers, increased the size of motor units, or reversed the sequence of motor unit recruitment. Such conditions are similar to those that arise in neuromuscular disorders, with aging, or during electrical stimulation of muscle, respectively.