SIMULTANEOUS PROBING OF SINGLE ERYTHROCYTE BIOCHEMCAL AND MECHANICAL PROPERTIES FOR EFFICIENT BLOOD TRANSFUSION

The age of stored blood plays a critical risk factor in blood transfusion [1, 2]. The strong connection between RBC clearance and the age of stored blood leads us to believe that age-dependent biochemical and mechanical changes play a key role in RBC clearance after transfusion. In this project, we are interested in finding out if these changes are more specific to a subpopulation of stored blood. Furthermore, a label-free RBC deformability based sorting [3] is performed to pre-filter less deformable RBCs. It is hoped that this pre-filtration prior to blood transfusion can potentially reduce in vivo RBC clearance of transfused blood, and other side effects of blood transfusion.