Lamellar Bodies Count to Predict Fetal Lung Maturity in Pregnant Women with Preterm Premature Rupture of Membranes

Abstract

Respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) is the most common cause of respiratory failure in neonates, and it is a major cause of mortality in the newborn period. Respiratory distress syndrome is caused by the insufficient production of pulmonary surfactant by immature fetal lungs, and the risk of developing RDS decreases with advancing gestational age (Lu et al., 2008). To reduce the increasing rate of neonatal morbidity and mortality from this problem, Gluck et al., 1997 introduced the Lecithen / Sphingomylin (L/S) ratio test on amniotic fluid to predict fetal lung maturity. It was set high enough to virtually guarantee that it would not falsely predict lung maturity (in practice 1- 2 % false mature rate). Unfortunately, the L/S ratio is not an easy test. It involves centrifugation, extraction, thin layer chromatography on fresh activated glass plates, development by heat charring and reading by absorptiometry. The test is labor intensive, tedious and slow, reproducibility is low (15 %), even in high quality laboratories (Tait et al., 2000). Lamellar body count (LBC) is a newer technique being utilized to assess fetal lung maturity. Final assembly and storage of surfactant occurs within lamellar bodies, which are extruded from types II pneumocytes into the alveoli. LBC is