Microcirculation research in community hospitals – challenges and chances

Issue title: Selected papers of the 36th Conference of the German Society for Clinical Microcirculation and Hemorheology, 5–8. June, 2017, Greifswald, Germany - New developments in clinical microcirculation imaging

Guest editors: M. Jünger, A. Krüger-Genge and F. Jung

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Kern, Hartmut^a | Sharawy, Nivin^b | Sardinha, Joel^c | Lehmann, Christian^{c; *}

Affiliations: [a] Department of Anesthesiology, Intensive Care Medicine and Pain Therapy, German Red Cross Hospital, Berlin-Köpenick, Germany | [b] Department of Anaesthesia, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt | [c] Department of Anesthesia, Pain Management and Perioperative Medicine, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author: Christian Lehmann, MD, PhD, FRCPC, Department of Anesthesia, Pain Management and Perioperative Medicine, QE II Health Sciences Centre, 10 West Victoria, 1276 South Park St., Halifax, NS, B3H 2Y9, Canada. E-mail: chlehmann@dal.ca.

Abstract: Community hospitals provide ideal conditions for large clinical studies because of the high volume of unselected patients admitted every year. With regard to microcirculatory studies, there are still some feasibility problems which are not solved yet. First of all, the lack of reliable automated software to analyze microcirculatory images represents the most important issue. Secondly, hardware aspects still need improvements regarding portability and miniaturization. Finally, to conduct studies of the microcirculation in a community hospital is also always a funding issue. The cost of the measurement device is hereby only one factor. Main cost factor is the personnel.

DOI: 10.3233/CH-179233

Journal: Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation, vol. 67, no. 3-4, pp. 511-514, 2017