Pulmonary venous vasculature in neonatal hyaline membrane disease.

The pulmonary veins and venules in lungs of newborn infants with hyaline membrane disease can be completely filled with a barium sulfate solution. The same injection technique and combined roentgenological, histological, and histometrical investigations also reveal a defect in filling of many small muscular arteries and of most pulmonary arterioles. Hence, the latter pulmonary vessels are assumed to be important in pulmonary ischemia, as demonstrated in the respiratory distress syndrome of the newborn infant.