Morphometric data on the arterial duct in the human fetal heart

In a total of 496 fetuses and newborns ranging in body weight from 60 to 5000 g, we performed a morphometric study of the ascending aorta, the descending aorta, the aortic isthmus, the right pulmonary artery, the left pulmonary artery and the arterial duct. In all, nine different parameters were measured in each specimen. The variations in the correlations between two measurable characteristics, namely body weight and each of the morphometric parameters, were analyzed. The minimum, normal and maximum patterns of normality for each parameter were obtained with regression equations. We compared statistically the diameter of the arterial duct with the diameter of the ascending and descending aorta, the aortic isthmus, the right pulmonary artery and the left pulmonary artery with one way analysis of variance, using Bonferroni's test in the pairwise comparisons. The diameter of the arterial duct was smaller than the diameter of the ascending and descending aortas, the aortic isthmus, the right pulmonary artery and the left pulmonary artery, and the diameter of the ascending aorta was larger than that of the descending aorta. These morphological data have immediate clinical and surgical applications in the treatment of fetal and perinatal cardiovascular disorders.