BioMedical Engineering OnLine BioMed Central Research Open Access Mathematical model describing erythrocyte sedimentation rate. Implications for blood viscosity changes in traumatic shock and crush syndrome Rovshan M Ismailov*1, Nikolai A Shevchuk2,3 and Higmat Khusanov4 Address: 1Department of Epidemiology, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA, 2Center for Cancer and Immunology Research, Children's Research Institute, Washington, DC, USA, 3Institute for Biomedical Sciences/Program in Molecular and Cellular Oncology, Washington, DC, USA and 4Institute of Mechanics and Seismic Stability of Structures, Academy of Science of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Uzbekistan Email: Rovshan M Ismailov* -
[email protected]; Nikolai A Shevchuk -
[email protected]; Higmat Khusanov -
[email protected] * Corresponding author Published: 04 April 2005 Received: 24 January 2005 Accepted: 04 April 2005 BioMedical Engineering OnLine 2005, 4:24 doi:10.1186/1475-925X-4-24 This article is available from: http://www.biomedical-engineering-online.com/content/4/1/24 © 2005 Ismailov et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: The erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) is a simple and inexpensive laboratory test, which is widespread in clinical practice, for assessing the inflammatory or acute response. This work addresses the theoretical and experimental investigation of sedimentation a single and multiple particles in homogeneous and heterogeneous (multiphase) medium, as it relates to their internal structure (aggregation of solid or deformed particles).