Cardiac growth in staged human fetuses: an allometric approach.

The human cardiac growth was studied on 30 staged fetuses (gestational age ranged from 10 to 38 weeks post conception, WPC). The hearts were quantitatively evaluated considering their weight and the following linear parameters: the pulmonary (da.p.) and aortic (dA) internal diameters, the right (VR) and left (VL) ventricular wall thickness, the ventricular width (dV), and the length "sulcus terminalis-apex cordis" (Lst-apex). The data were correlated with the gestational age by using the allometric method (Y = bX alpha). The equations and the growth curves are presented. In the fetal life, we observe that the body weight is 134 times larger than the heart weight, the Lst-apex is 1.07 times larger than the dV, the da.p. is 1.50 times larger than the dA, and the VL is 1.19 times larger than the VR.