ABSTRACT
Blood-contacting applications pose severe requirements on materials. While clotting and thrombosis are the most obvious evidences of blood incompatibility, they are only the end-products of a complex series of events when materials come in contact with blood. The coagulation of blood involves a series of complex reactions resulting in the arrest of blood flow through a damaged vessel. Elliptical cell system permits the evaluation of various blood coagulation parameters and the morphological examination of test surfaces in the absence of a blood-air interface. Blood is withdrawn in a polypropylene syringe having a silicone rubber plunger, heparinized and citrated, and admitted through polypropylene tubing to the bottom of the column that is packed with microbeads. Arterio-Venous shunt system is designed to evaluate the relative thrombogenicity of materials that are in contact with blood using a chronic arterio-venous shunt and a plexiglass couettetype test chamber.
