Valutazione clinica della vitalità del neonato e valutazione istologica della placenta nella specie canina

Placenta has been described as the "diary of intrauterine life" and it has the potential to clarify many aspects of pre- and post-natal period. The following investigation aims to study and describe the pathological macroscopic and histological aspects of canine placentas at the end of the pregnancy, with the related clinical and pathological correlations between placental findings and neonatal outcome. The purpose of this study was to apply, for the first time in the canine species, an image analysis technique (ImagJ) in order to assess some histological features of placenta, in particular the placental microvasculature. The study also aims to verify if these placental modifications can affect the puppy's health, as well as to correlate the clinical parameters of the newborn, such as Apgar score, temperature, blood glucose and lactate assessed at birth and two hours later, among themselves and with the type of delivery (spontaneous, emergency cesarean and planned caesarean). This study includes clinical data and histological material from placentas collected from 33 bitches and 144 puppies between January 2013 and December 2015. It emerged that placenta is a plastic and adaptable organ that suffers of the "effect of litter size" with an increase of the capillary density in smaller placentas obtained in bigger litters. The influence of lobular histological lesions on the outcome of the puppy should be considered irrelevant, the same cannot be said for multi-lobular ones. Moreover, it seems that the clinical parameters of the puppy are affected by the type of delivery. In fact, lactatemia and body temperature at birth appear to be higher in case of natural delivery, while glycaemia at birth is higher in case of planned caesarean section. On the contrary, it seems that the Apgar score and the survival at 24 hours are not influenced by the different types of birth.