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Medicina is published by MDPI from Volume 54 Issue 1 (2018). Previous articles were published by another publisher in Open Access under a CC-BY (or CC-BY-NC-ND) licence, and they are hosted by MDPI on mdpi.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Elsevier.

Article

4 September 2012

Microvascular Distribution in the Ocular Conjunctiva and Digestive Tract in an Experimental Setting

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Department of Intensive Care, Medical Academy, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences

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Department of Surgery, Medical Academy, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences

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Center of Mechatronics, Kaunas University of Technology

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Institute of Cardiology, Medical Academy, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences

Medicina2012, 48(8), 62;https://doi.org/10.3390/medicina48080062

Abstract

microcirculation; conjunctiva; jejunum; rectum; pigs

Keywords:

Recently improved microcirculatory imaging techniques, such as orthogonal polarization spectral (OPS) and its technical successor sidestream dark field (SDF) imaging, in handheld devices have allowed a direct observation of the microcirculation at the bedside. Usually a cut-off of 20 μm in diameter is used to differentiate small vessels (mainly capillaries) from large vessels (mainly venules) during this technique. We hypothesized that it was possible to measure the small vessels with a considerably smaller inner diameter. Material and Methods. Images of the sublingual, conjunctival, jejunal, and rectal mucosa microcirculation were obtained with SDF videomicroscopy (Microscan®, Microvision Medical, Amsterdam, the Netherlands). Using the validated software, the length and diameter of microvessels were manually traced with a computer-generated line. All vessels were divided into the groups according to the inner diameter. Results. A total of 156 SDF images of the sublingual, ocular conjunctival, jejunal, and rectal mucosa were taken in 13 pigs. The length of microscopic vessels progressively increased with a decrease in the vessel diameter less than 8 mm in all the lodges, such as sublingual (80.6% of total vessel length), ocular conjunctival (76.5% of total vessel length), jejunal (99.8% of total vessel length), and rectal (97.8% of total vessel length), due to capillary network formation. There was no significant difference in the distribution of vessels from 0 to 10 μm in diameter comparing sublingual and eye conjunctival as well as jejunal and rectal mucosa. Conclusion. In pigs, small-diameter microscopic vessels (<10 μm) dominated in all the studied lodges (sublingual, ocular conjunctival, jejunal, and rectal mucosa), and this is evidence to establish a new cut-off for capillaries in microcirculatory analysis of SDF imaging in experimental and clinical studies.

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