Word: hematocrit
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...their theory was difficult because the blood's viscosity is not uniform in any one patient at any one moment : it probably hits momentary peaks in the coronary arteries, where it cannot be measured directly. As a guide to viscosity, Drs. Burch and DePasquale took readings with a hematocrit - an instrument that measures the concentration of red cells in a centrifuged blood sample. The normal range is 40% to 50%. Most of their heart-disease patients had readings of up to 56%. Patient after patient obtained relief from repeated angina attacks, which cause fierce pain in the chest...
Incidental support for the doctors' theory came from a woman who had had frequent angina attacks, but got complete relief after she suffered an internal hemorrhage which dropped her hematocrit reading to 26%. She asked spontaneously: "Was that bleeding good for me?'' Drs. Burch and DePasquale think it was. Also, they argue, the relative freedom from angina and coronary disease enjoyed by women of menstruating age probably reflects the fact that their hematocrits read around 40%. After the menopause, women's hematocrits go up; so does their susceptibility to coronary disease and angina...
...Normal. Urinalysis, blood count, sedimentation rate, hematocrit and blood chemistry tests...
...says Dr. Wintrobe, "depends on an ounce of knowledge, an equal amount of understanding, and a pound of thoroughness." This thoroughness begins with determining the degree of anemia. Ordinary red blood-cell counts, Dr. Wintrobe insists, have a wide margin of error, and the only accurate test is the hematocrit method (his own invention), now being adopted by more and more hospitals...