Pilot Study to Obtain Pulmonary Endothelium from Pediatric Cardiac Catheterization

Pediatric pulmonary hypertension (PH) has high morbidity and mortality, with an estimated 5-year survival of 75% regardless of underlying cause. Pediatric PH most commonly affects infants born preterm who develop lung disease of prematurity as well as those with congenital heart disease. Current therapies have been adapted from the treatment of adult PH. One barrier to the study of pediatric PH is the lack of live tissue samples for research. In this manuscript, we describe the methods to obtain pulmonary endothelium from cardiac catheterization of pediatric patients with PH. We adapted methods previously described in adult patients undergoing isolated right heart catheterization to obtain viable pulmonary endothelium from three patients. Primary cells were grown using standard endothelial culture techniques, passaged, and analyzed with immunofluorescence and flow cytometry to confirm cell type. To our knowledge, this is the first published account of pulmonary endothelial culture from pediatric patients.