Cardiopulmonary bypass cannulas are usually characterized by the French number. However this de- scription provides only the external diameter of the cannula, which gives no information about the press- ure-flow characteristics of the cannula itself. A standardized system to describe the pressure-flow characteristics of a given cannula has recently been proposed and has been termed the M-number It is reported that the pressure-flow characteristics of a particular cannula can be determined from a novo- gram or chart, if the experimentally derived M-number of the cannula is known. In this regard, we conducted an investigation to analyze correlation between experimentally and clinical y derived M-numbers using three different sizes of pediatric aortic cannulas in fifty cardiac patients on cardiopulmonary bypass. The clinical and experimental M-numbers showed a strong correlation. The clinical M-numbers were typically 0.)5 to 0.55 greater than the experimental M-numbers. The clinical M-numbers also showed an inverse relationship to the temperature change of the patient, most probably due to an increase in blood viscosity from hypothermia. This inverse clinical M-numbersltemperature re- lationship was more marked in higher M-number cannulas. The clinical data obtained in this study suggest that the experimentally derived M-numbers correlated strongly with the clinical performance of the cannula with the significant influence of the temperature.