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Impaired structural remodelling of pulmonary arteries in newborns with congenital diaphragmatic hernia: a histological study of 29 cases

Congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) is associated in many cases with lung hypoplasia and pulmonary hypertension (PH). The pathogenetic mechanisms underlying the pulmonary hypertension in CDH are not completely understood. In order to alleviate the pulmonary hypertension, new therapeutic modalities have been introduced including extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). This paper reports a study of the histology of the lungs of 29 CDH autopsy cases, with special attention to the pulmonary arteries, and relating the findings to gestational age and ECMO treatment. Formalin‐fixed and paraffin‐embedded specimens were stained with haematoxylin and eosin (H&E) and elastic van Gieson (EvG) stains, followed by morphometric measurements of the arterial media and adventitia. As expected, there was a significant decrease in adventitial percentage and total wall thicknesses of small pulmonary arteries with an external diameter less than or equal to 150 µm in term control newborns compared with pre‐term controls ( p=0·0004 and 0·05). In CDH newborns, all the measured values of the arterial wall remained significantly higher. The increase of adventitial thickness also affected the supernumerary arteries in CDH neonates. CDH newborns subjected to ECMO treatment showed a significantly thinner arterial adventitia than CDH cases who did not receive ECMO ( p=0·0001), the former approaching normal values. These results indicate that in CDH, there is failure of the normal arterial remodelling processes occurring in the perinatal period. The adventitial thickening, which has been reported previously in term CDH patients only, was related in the present study to differences in gestational ages. This appears to be partially reversed by ECMO treatment, thus constituting one of the mechanisms by which ECMO treatment aids in alleviating the associated PH in CDH newborns. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.