A New View of Starling's Hypothesis at the Microstructural Level

In this paper we quantitatively investigate the hypothesis proposed by Michel (Exp. Physiol. 82, 1-30, 1997) and Weinbaum (Ann. Biomed. Eng. 26, 1-17, 1998) that the Starling forces are determined by the local difference in the hydrostatic and colloid osmotic pressure across the endothelial surface glycocalyx, which we propose is the primary molecular sieve for plasma proteins, rather than the global difference in the hydrostatic and oncotic...