[Morphologic features of pneumonia in young children of the Northeast USSR].

Post-mortem investigations of the lungs of 160 children below 2 years of age who had died of acute pneumonia in Magadan were carried out with the use of histological, histochemical, histotopographic, macro- and micromorphometric methods. As to duration of the disease, pneumonias were divided arbitrarily into acute (up to 21 days) and protracted one (from 3 weeks to 2 months). It was established that acute pneumonia in children in Magadan were of polysegmentary character, with involvement in the process of 3-7 segments of each lung and with exclusion from the act of breathing up to 80-90% of the lung's surface. Most often the pathological process was localized in the posterior and postero-inferior segments. Along with pneumonia, which was of interstitial, focal or mixed character, atelectasis and acute emphysema developed. Histologically described acute pneumonias were characterized by pronounced lesions of the tracheobronchial tree, drastic circulatory disorders with formation of "garland-like" structures from the expanded capillary network of the lungs, the presence of hyaline membranes and large hyperchromic conglomerates. In protracted pneumonias in addition lesions of the argyrophilic and elastic carcass of the lungs were observed.