[Postpartum hysterectomy performed as a consequence of chronic myometritis]

As a diffuse chronic inflammation, myometritis is very rare and usually follows after postpartal placenta remains or postabortion infections, but it can be also associated with endometrial or ascendent infection. Chronic myometritis is often followed by profuse bleeding, though in most cases it cannot be recognized as it is asymptomatic. Histologically, that chronic process is characterized by the presence of fibriosis within the muscles and mononuclear cells (lymphoplasmocytic and histiocytic) infiltration.

A 24 old woman's second child was delivered per vias naturalis but the next day the profuse bleeding occured which would not stop even after repeated curretages and suspecting a case of placenta accreta and uterus atony, subtotal hysterectomy was performed. Histologically, the disappearance of the regular arrangement of the smooth muscles and stroma could be seen with the devastation of myometrium due to the diffuse reduction of its smooth muscle bundles and cells, as well as their atrophy, necrobiosis and apoptosis with the minimal preservation of the muscle bundles and little cell groups of the myometrium, an abundant presence of the fibrocollagene and myxoid transformed connective tissue, group cells similar to the mesenchymal tissue and adipocytes.

It was not possible to find this variant of the changes on the myometrium in the available literature. The present case is about the clinically unknown asymptomatic myometritis, possibly developed in the postpartal period of the previous pregnancy. It is our opinion that it is most probably an autoagressive process directed towards the smooth muscle cells of the myometrium, as shown by their reduction and inflammatory cells composition, which plays an important role in the immune reactions (lymphocytes, plasma cells, eosinophilis, histocytes).

A subtotal hysterectomy was performed on a woman, 24 years old, who gave birth to her second child and had profuse postpartal bleeding in sprite of repeated curettages. On the basis of this uterus atony, there is the clinically non-manifested chronic myometritis. The chronic inflammation resulted in a subtotal reduction of myometrium muscle mass, its replacement sclerosis, the multiplication of adipocytes, mesenchymal cells, histiocytes, lymphomonocytes and dissection of muscle fascicles.