Shear-Induced Hemolysis: Species Differences

The nonphysiological mechanical shear stress in blood-contacting medical devices is one major factor to device-induced blood damage. Animal blood is often used to test device-induced blood damage potential of these devices due to its easy accessibility and low cost. However, the differences in shear-induced blood damage between animals and human have not been well characterized. The purpose of this study was to investigate shear-induced hemolysis of human and three commonly used preclinical evaluation animal species (ovine, porcine, and bovine) under shear conditions encountered in blood-contacting medical devices. Shear-induced hemolysis experiments were conducted using two single-pass blood-shearing devices. Driven by an externally pressurized reservoir, blood single-passes through a small annular gap in the shearing devices where the blood was exposed to a uniform high shear stress. Shear-induced hemolysis at different conditions of exposure time (0.04 to 1.5 s) and shear stress (25 to 320 Pa) was quantified for ovine, porcine, bovine, and human blood, respectively. Within these ranges of shear stress and exposure time, shear-induced hemolysis was less than 2% for the four species. The results showed that the ovine blood was more susceptible to shear-induced injury than the bovine, porcine, and human blood. The response of the porcine and bovine blood to shear was similar to the human blood. The dependence of hemolysis on shear stress level and exposure time was found to fit well the power law functional form for the four species. The coefficients of the power law models for the ovine, porcine, bovine, and human blood were derived.