Consequences of Debris in Circulation from Medical Devices

[tandoorichicken]

At a high shear rate, red blood cells become elongated and oriented in one direction, facilitating smooth blood flow. However, at a high enough shear rate, the cells will become so strained that a part of the cell membrane pinches off. This often occurs in poorly designed medical devices that keep blood moving through the body during surgery. These membrane vesicles aren't filtered out once the blood passes from the machine back into the body, so my question is, what are the consequences of having these pieces of cell membrane floating around in the circulation?

 

[Revenged]

I think that pieces of cell membrane will do nothing... They are insignicantly small...

It's when you have blood clots being released into the circulation where you can get serious problems... This can lead to life threatening conditions such as stroke, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolsims...etc... people take low doses of aspirin to try and prevent this...

 

[hypatia]

Red blood cell debris are cleaned out via the liver, carried with bile into the intestines and removed through the bowel.