Vijayamma Kunnath Narayanan 1 , Ushavathy Padmanabhan
BACKGROUND The coronary arteries are the biggest vasa vasora in the body since the heart is considered to be a modified blood vessel. The increased myocardial oxygen demand of the heart is met wholly by two coronary arteries. Hence, patients with coronary artery disease are prone to develop myocardial ischemia. The study is aimed at the structural changes of this vessels in the population of middle Kerala of various age groups from birth to seventy years. MATERIALS AND METHODS The specimen for histological study were fixed in 10% formalin and subjected to tissue processing. The sections were taken at the thickness of 5 microns and stained by using Haematoxylin- Eosin method and Verhoeff’s method for elastic fibers. The thickness of arterial wall were measured using ocular micrometer. RESULTS Structural changes of the three layered vessel walls were observed. Intimal proliferation, splitting, fragmentation and reduplication of internal elastic lamina were the important histological observation in the arterial wall as age advances. It was observed that there was a sixty fold increase in the thickness of intima from foetal to sixth decade of life. Tunica media exhibit a six fold increase in thickness probably due to muscular hypertrophy. The tunica adventitia have a threefold increase in thickness which least compared with other tunics. CONCLUSION These changes may favour atherosclerosis resulting in myocardial ischemia. Ischemic heart disease is the major cause of death and disability among the age group of third to sixth decade of life.
