The correlation between blood pressure and morphometric findings in children with congenital heart disease and pulmonary hypertension

The lungs of 68 children with malformations of the heart or the great vessels which could cause pulmonary hypertension were obtained at autopsy. We analysed the media of muscular pulmonary arteries morphometrically and calculated the area ratio (area media/total area of the vessel). As hemodynamic parameter we used the systolic blood pressure ratio (pulmonary/systemic). Additionally we employed the mean pressure of the pulmonary artery in 38 cases. We analysed the correlation between hemodynamic and morphometric parameters and obtained a product moment correlation of 0.7. There was a linear correlation between the area and pressure ratios. Younger children showed a higher relative thickness of the media than older children with comparable pressure ratios. After dividing the children into three age groups, we obtained an even higher correlation (r = 0.90 in the oldest group). We found these correlations not only in cases with left-to-right shunt but also in children with other heart defects. There was also a good correlation between the quantitatively measured data and the qualitative Heath and Edwards classification.