Capillaries are the smallest of a body's blood vessels, measuring 5-10 μm in diameter, which connect arterioles and venules, and enable the interchange of water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and many other nutrient and waste chemical substances between blood and surrounding tissues.[1]
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Blood flows from the heart to arteries, which branch and narrow into arterioles, and then branch further still into capillaries. After the tissue has been perfused, capillaries join and widen to become venules and then widen more to become veins, which return blood to the heart.
The "capillary bed" is the network of capillaries supplying an organ. The more metabolically active the cells, the more capillaries it will require to supply nutrients and carry away waste products.
Metarterioles provide direct communication between arterioles and venules and are important in bypassing the bloodflow through the capillaries. True capillaries branch mainly from metarterioles and provide exchange between cells and the circulation. The internal diameter of 8 μm forces the red blood cells to partially fold into bullet-like shapes in order to by pass them in single file.
Precapillary sphincters are rings of smooth muscles at the origin of true capillaries that regulate blood flow into true capillaries and thus control blood flow through a tissue.
Capillaries come in three types:
The capillary wall is a one-layer endothelium so thin that gas and molecules such as oxygen, water, proteins and lipids can pass through them driven by osmotic and hydrostatic gradients. Waste products such as carbon dioxide and urea can diffuse back into the blood to be carried away for removal from the body. The physics of this exhange is explained by the Starling equation.
The capillary bed usually carries no more than 25% of the amount of blood it could contain, although this amount can be increased through auto regulation by inducing relaxation of smooth muscle in the arterioles that lead to the capillary bed as well as constriction of the metarterioles.
The capillaries do not possess this smooth muscle in their own wall, and so any change in their diameter is passive. Any signaling molecules they release (such as endothelin for constriction and nitric oxide for dilation) act on the smooth muscle cells in the walls of nearby, larger vessels, e.g. arterioles.
Capillary permeability can be increased by the release of certain cytokines, such as in an immune response.
Starling equation is a mathematical model for fluid movement across capillaries: Jv=Kf[(Pc-Pi)-(pc-pi)] where: Jv = fluid movement (ml/min) Kf = hydraulic conductance (ml/min. mmHg) Pc = Capillary hydrostatic pressure Pi = Interstetial hydrostatic pressure pc = capillary oncotic pressure pi = interstestial oncotic pressure.
Ibn al-Nafis theorized a "premonition of the capillary circulation in his assertion that the pulmonary vein receives what comes out of the pulmonary artery, this being the reason for the existence of perceptible passages between the two."[4]
Marcello Malpighi was the first to observe and correctly describe capillaries when he discovered them in a frog's lung in 1661.[5]
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