Characterization and Some Physicochemical Aspects of Pathological Microcalcifications

A study was conducted to investigate characterization and some physicochemical aspects of pathological microcalcifications of calcium salts encountered in pathological calcifications and the role of proteins in these processes. The investigations showed the different levels of complexity of pathological calcifications, revealing that such biological entities were present everywhere in the human body. Their origin was complex and was induced by different kinds of abnormalities. It was also revealed that such pathological calcifications had a hierarchical structural organization, which was related to the history of the patient. The study highlighted different specific structural aspects of pathological calcification by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observations related to major medical aspects. The observations proposed that a morphologic examination be performed before compositional analysis by means of X-ray diffraction or infrared spectroscopy, as this direct SEM examination constituted a simple, rapid, and cheap tool.