The blood rheology in renal pathology.

The blood is a viscoelastic material often studied as a Newtonian or non-linear liquid. Some pathologies and extracorporeal blood treatment processes may affect both the liquid and solid blood component. An adequate rheological technique, able to detect these alterations, may provide clinicians with an important diagnostic aid. Creep tests consisting in the application of a constant stress are very promising because they may roughly separate the liquid-like (i.e., at long response times) from the solid-like (i.e., at short response times) component of the blood rheological behaviour. In this paper, some preliminary results obtained in creep tests on healthy and uremic individuals are reported showing the potentiality of this technique.