Ellis-van Creveld syndrome: a generalized dysplasia of enchondral ossification.

We report a 25-week fetus with lethal Ellis-van Creveld syndrome who was diagnosed prenatally from the US detection of a narrow chest, postaxial polydactyly of the hands, short acro-/mesomelic limbs and a ventricular septal defect. The postnatal radiographic features of the skeleton confirmed the diagnosis. Literature review of the histopathology of the physeal growth plate is contradictory, varying between retardation of the hypertrophic chondrocytes without disorganization and marked disorganization of the proliferating chondrocytes. We investigated numerous sites of the enchondral ossification and observed retardation of the physeal growth plate in all sites and retardation with pronounced disorganization of the physeal growth plate in the upper mesomelic bone segments only. These data support the concept that Ellis-van Creveld syndrome is mainly a generalized disorder of the maturation of enchondral ossification.