Swirling Flow Can Suppress Platelet Adhesion to the Surface of a Sudden Tubular Expansion Tube

To test the hypothesis that intentionally induced swirling flow in an end-to-end anastomosis could suppress flow disturbance, impeding thrombus formation by affecting platelets adhesion, a comparative study was designed to investigate the effect of swirling flow on the adhesion and activation of platelets in a glass sudden tubular expansion tube coated with calf skin type I collagen. The results revealed that the swirling flow generated in the expansion could reduce the length of the flow recirculation zone distal to the expansion and significantly reduce the total number of adherent platelets in the test tube when compared with that for the normal flow. No significant difference was observed in the activation of platelets between the swirling flow group and the normal flow group. The present study therefore suggests that intentionally introduced swirling flow in an end-to-end anastomosis has no adverse effect on platelet activation and may indeed be a solution to improve the patency of end-to-end microvascular anastomoses by suppressing thrombus formation.