Research conducted by a team of scientists from Kaunas Universities in Lithuania revealed that low-frequency ultrasound influences blood parameters. The findings suggest that ultrasound’s effect on hemoglobin can improve oxygen’s transfer from the lungs to bodily tissues — improving oxygen saturation in the lungs for pulmonary hypertension patients.
The research used 300 blood samples from 42 pulmonary patients, which were exposed to six different low-frequency ultrasound modes at the Institute of Mechatronics of Kaunas University of Technology.
The research team revealed the ultrasound’s impact on blood parameters is not limited to the platelet count — it also affects red blood cells, which can result in better oxygen circulation and lowered blood pressure.
Professor Vytautus Ostasevicius, PhD, a lead researcher in the study and head of the KTU Institute of Mechatronics, said this could lead to new treatments for pulmonary patients.
“During exposure to low-frequency ultrasound, aggregated RBCs are dissociated into single RBCs, whose hemoglobin molecules interact with oxygen over the entire surface area of RBCs, which is larger than that of aggregated RBCs and improves oxygen saturation in the blood,” he said. “The number of dissociated single RBCs per unit volume of blood decreases due to the spaces between them, compared to aggregates, which reduces blood viscosity and affects blood pressure. This means that low-frequency ultrasound can be potentially used for improving oxygen saturation in lungs for pulmonary hypertension patients.”
