04 January 2018 2 3K Report

The smallest microcapillaries are slightly smaller than many red blood cells, requiring the RBC to bend to pass through. If you have a cold agglutinin disease, for example, you may have clumps of two or three RBCs. With sickle cell disease, you can get larger RBC clumps which block capillaries completely.

My question is this: how elastic are these smallest microcapillaries? If you have clumps of two or three RBC that are tightly bound, can the microcapillaries expand enough to not cause endothelium damage? What is the size limit of a clump before you would expect endothelium damage over time? I am looking for citable references for a new paper I am writing.

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