Presencia de alteraciones histopatológicas en vellosidades placentarias normales en Maracay (Venezuela)

objective: determining the percentage of histopathological changes in chorionic villi and intervillous space in four placentas obtained from normal women's pregnancies at term. methodology: six quantitative variables (i.e. immaturity, syncytial knots, fibrinoid change, oedema, fibrosis and calcification) and nine qualitative variables (i.e. fibrin deposition, intervillous fibrin, infarction, thrombosis, changes in vessel walls, intraluminal calcification, vascular congestion, inflammation and haemorrhage) were indentified on 25 slides covering 5 placental regions using light microscopy and h&e staining. quantitative variable results were analysed using two-way variance analysis with sub-sampling and tukey’s test; qualitative variables (the percentage of positive regions) were analysed by kruskal-wallis test. the software used was statistix？ 8.0 and sas？ 9.0 for windows？. results: there were significant differences (p<0.05) between placenta (but not between regions) regarding syncytial knots, fibrinoid change, oedema, fibrosis and calcification. vascular thrombosis, damage to vessel walls, vascular congestion, intraluminal calcification, inflammation and/or haemorrhage were not observed. conclusion: the population of villi analysed was homogeneous in each placenta but not amongst them, thereby indicating variability which could be etiologically explained by genetic and environmental factors whose interaction may have resulted in the individual differences observed for each placenta.