[Capillary length in the human heart during physiological growth and under pathological conditions].

Knowledge about the capillary length in mammalian and human heart is still scanty. Because it is very difficult to examine this parameter directly we used an indirect method. The distance between the arterioles can be used as an approximately measurement for the double capillary length. We tried to measure the distances between arterioles in about 30 postmortem injected hearts using India ink to produce a kind of reflected imitated tabby (tiger) heart pattern. In addition we measured the distances between arterioles with orcein staining in histological preparation of 130 human hearts including 24 hearts with congenital vitia. Our results indicate that from birth there is a determined continuous growth of capillary length with increasing heart weight during physiological development and under pathological conditions. The capillary length in hypertrophic hearts may be an additional functional impairment of the pathological hearts.