Intrinsic cardiac nervous system plays a crucial role in regulation of heart rate, contractility and tone of the coronary vessels. In neonates and infants, the intrinsic neural pathways are considered to be important for radiofrequency ablation that is performed in cases of incessant supraventricular and atrioventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia. Findings regarding to topography of intrinsic cardiac ganglia in the human fetuses differ substantially and deserves a further examination. The aim of this study was to investigate the topography and morphology of the human epicardiac neural ganglia during prenatal period. Results of the present study show, that: (1) the human fetal epicardiac ganglia are in their definitive location already from 15 weeks of gestation; (2) the number of the fetal epicardiac ganglia does not age-dependent and does not differ significantly between the fetal and the adult humans; (3) the distribution of the fetal epicardiac ganglia does not age-dependent; (4) the variability of the neural ganglionated fields, including both the ganglion number and the regional ganglion density, vary substantially from heart to heart; (5) the sizes of epicardiac ganglia in the human fetuses differ substantially from the adult ones, and that the ganglion structure, ganglion size and the number of interganglionic nerves are dependent on gestation stage of the human fetuses.

Raktažodžiai: Heart innervation, autonomic ganglia, intrinsic cardiac nerves, human fetus, acetylcholinesterase