Background: Morphometric publications based on the measurement of
cardiocyte nuclei indicated their progressive hypertrophy, ignoring however their shape, which is a deciding factor for the microscopic-based diagnosis of hypertrophy and myocardial diseases. We sought to demonstrate how the digital morphology of cardiocyte nuclei changes and correlate it with the type of myocardial pathology.
Material/Methods: The study groups encompassed 7 hearts with dilatative
cardiomyopathy (DCM) and 8 hearts with ischemic heart disease (IHD) explanted during transplantation. The comparative group consisted of myocardial hypertrophy, while the control group were donor heart fragments. Cardiocyte nuclei were evaluated morphometrically in histological slides. We calculated the nuclear area, length, breadth, perimeter, roundness, elongation, fullness factors and nuclear chromatin mean gray level. The results were compared statistically and analyzed with discriminate analysis.
Results: All karyometric measurements analyzed with backward discriminate
analysis showed that only two factors, nuclear breadth and chromatin mean gray level are the most powerful in classifying analyzed cases. The Mahalanobis distance showed the proximity of control and hypertrophy groups, while differences between IHD and DCM were non-significant.
Conclusions: Karyometry showed no differences between analyzed cardiopathies IHD and DCM suggesting the common morphologic response for long-lasting progressive injury. The main morphological differences are dependent on nuclear chromatin activity/stainability and the nuclear breadth, suggesting darker and elongated nuclei in normal and adaptative stages and
irregular brighter nuclei in cardiomyopathies.

Keywords: Heart Transplantation