Comparison of gross morphological and histological features Of placenta betweenhypertensive pregnant women and nonhypertensive Pregnant women attending muhimbili national Hospital

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Placenta is the fetomaternal vital organ which is responsible for the maintenance of the pregnancy and promotion of fetal growth and development. The optimal survival, growth and development of the fetus are correspondence to the appropriate formationand development of the placenta. Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy exert great impact onplacenta and thus reflects changes both morphological and histological. There were very fewstudies done on this topic and most of them were done among Caucasians. This study was notdone in our settings. We did this study in order to see if these differences exist in our settingand being important in providing comparative analysis with other studies so as to confirm themagnitude of changes caused by hypertensive pregnant disease to human placenta and addknowledge on this topic. We expected the knowledge obtained from this study to increaseawareness on placental impact of the disease particularly with reference to our population andto make comparative analysis with other populations. AIM: This study compared the morphological and histological features of placenta between hypertensive pregnant mothers and non-hypertensive pregnant mothers attended Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH). METHODS: A hospital based comparative cross sectional study was conducted from June 2020 to August 2020 at Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH).A total of 80 placenta were studied morphologically and histologically, of which 40 placenta were from hypertensive pregnant mothers and 40 placenta were from normotensive pregnant mothers. In the morphological aspect, the shape, weight, the site of insertion of the umbilical cord, the numberof cotyledons of each placenta and thickness of placenta were noted. In the histological partNeutral buffered formalin (NBF) was used the routine staining technique which wasHematoxylin and Eosin (H&E) and light microscope were used. The data were analyzed byusing SPSS version 20 computer software and results were summarized in means and proportions.