OBJECTIVES: to describe and quantify morphological changes in placental villi in pregnancies with multiple fetal malformations of the skeletal system. METHODS: four placentas from fetuses of gestational ages 13, 16, 20 and 38 weeks, aborted for therapeutic reasons were examined. Normal placentas of the same gestational age, from cases where legal elective abortion had been recommended on medical grounds, were taken as the control. The hematoxilineosin stain was applied to ten slides in five regions of each placenta using a protocol with four quantitative variables: maturity of villi, fibrinoid changes, edema and stromal fibrosis and one qualitative variable: thrombosis. The quantitative results were analyzed using ANOVA in a randomized manner and the Tukey test was applied; for the qualitative variable the trend test for correlated data was used. The software used was Statistix 8.0 and SAS 9.0 for Windows. RESULTS: there were significant differences (p<0.05) between the placentas associated with multiple malformations of the skeletal system and control placentas in terms of the quantitative variables. No significant differences were found (p>0.05) in relation to the qualitative variable. CONCLUSIONS: the population of placental villi associated with multiple malformations of the skeletal system exhibited a high percentage of changes which is an indication that the placenta is damaged, thereby affecting the exchange of gases, nutrients and metabolites during the development of the fetus.
Morphological alterations; Chorionic villi; Multiple malformations
