What Is Gestational Trophoblastic Disease And How To Treat The Condition?

Usually, the term gestational trophoblastic disease (GST) is a group of several conditions.

All the conditions lead to abnormal growth of cells inside your uterus.

This disease is a quick developing form of cancer and it affects your uterus after the pregnancy, or lead to abortion or a miscarriage.

Gestational trophoblastic disease is usually a metastatic disease, i.e. it can spread to any other places in your body. This disease is also referred to as choriocarcinoma. This is almost a curable disease.

Usually, gestational trophoblastic disease starts in the layer of cells called as trophoblast, which bound the little embryo. There are four types of conditions associated with GST, such as:

• Choriocarcinoma
• Persistence/invasive gestational trophoblastic disease
• Complete/partial hydatidiform mole
• Placental site trophoblastic tumors

Risk factors associated with Gestational trophoblastic disease:

• This condition can affect you at any age, but it is more common in pregnancies after 40 years of age or below 15 years.
• Gestational trophoblastic disease also has an increased risk of multiple pregnancies.
• 50% of cases with this condition had a chance for molar pregnancies.

How to recognize the condition of Gestational trophoblastic disease?

The disease is possibly associated with various symptoms. Whenever you recognize any of the following symptoms, immediately you need to consult your practitioner:

• Continuous or irregular vaginal bleeding with a recent record of hydatidiform mole (growth that forms inside your uterus during early pregnancy period)
• Formation of ovarian cysts
• Abnormal inflammation of the uterus
• Severe pain
• Continuous record of high HCG levels

How to alleviate gestational trophoblastic disease?

Invasive mole, placental site trophoblastic tumor and hydatidiform mole are removed by using a procedure called suction curettage.

Hysterectomy is also preferred if you are not planning for childbearing.

Once after the removal of the tumor, gestational trophoblastic disease is categorized clinically to find whether further treatment is required. X-ray of your chest is taken and also the levels of β-hCG are measured. If the levels won’t come to their normal range within 10 weeks, then the disease is considered as persistent.

Persistent disease: It needs CT of your brain, abdomen, pelvis and chest. The results will clarify whether the disease is metastatic or non-metastatic. In metastatic condition, death risks may be low or high. Metastatic disease is divided into two conditions: good prognosis and poor prognosis diseases.

Chemotherapy is recommended in order to treat the condition of persistent diseases. If β-hCG levels are measured as normal at an interval of 1 week, then only the treatment is considered as successful. Oral contraceptives are provided for 6-10 months.

Non-persistent disease: It can be treated by using single chemotherapeutic drug. Hysterectomy is also recommended for women over 40 years of age. If single chemotherapeutic drug cannot give good results, then multi chemotherapeutic drugs or hysterectomy is recommended. Patients with non-metastatic disease can be successfully cured.

So, don’t worry about the condition of gestational trophoblastic disease, there is complete cure for your disease. Continuous visits to the doctor with regular treatment will give good results.