Abstract
Blood viscosity and hematocrit were measured on 113 newborn infants during the first 6 days of life including 3 cases of neonatal hyperviscosity syndrome. Viscosity examinations were carried out at 37°C with a Epprecht Viscometer Low-shear-100, Contravas Company.
Blood viscosity of normal term infants with late cord clamping was significantly higher at 2 hours of age than the cord blood (p<0.001), and then decreased gradually until 6 days of age when the value was still higher than that of the cord blood.
Viscosity of the infants born after cesarean section showed no increase at 2 and 4 days after birth compared with the cord blood, but the value at 6 days of age was significantly higher than that of the cord blood (p<0.05) .
Viscosity of normal term infants was higher than that of infants born after cesarean section, A F D low birth weight infants and S F D low birth weight infants (p<0.05), the difference was statistically significant. There was no significant difference between the latter 3 groups.
The relation between viscosity and hematocrit calculated the correlation coefficient to be more than 0.9 with hematcrit (p<0.001) . Therefore, it should be possible to use hematocrit instead of viscosity measurement for simple clinical purposes.
Three cases of neonatal hyperviscosity syndrome showed significantly high blood viscosity and hematocrit over 65 %. Viscosity and hematocrit decreased after partial exchange transfusion with clinical improvement.
