Outcome of pregnancy subsequent to chemotherapy with actinomycin-D in low risk gestational trophoblastic neoplasia

The histological terminology of persistent gestational trophoblastic disease (GTD) is an excessive abnormal trophoblast. GTN will mostly occur after the molar pregnancy; while, it might occur after each kind of pregnancy such as abortion, ectopic pregnancy (EP), etc. too. The follow-up process is to interest to scholars as a mandatory procedure in patients with GTN for detecting the recurrence. This disease is frequently seen in reproductive ages. It should be noticed that an approach for assessing the success in this procedure carried out by monitoring outcomes of pregnancy after chemotherapy.
A retrospective cohort study was conducted on patients with GTN who were referred to Firoozgar and Mirza Koochak Khan teaching hospitals during 10 years, starting from 2004. The inclusion criterion was patients with low-risk persistent GTN after molar pregnancy, EP, and abortion, that treated with single agent chemotherapy actinomycin-D. After following the patients for 12 months, patients with serum βHCG lower than 5 mIU/ml, who intended to have child were allowed to become pregnant. The following items were observed in the study: age, body mass index (BMI), parity, chemotherapy duration, and pregnancy outcomes such as spontaneous abortion or preterm labor, pre-eclampsia, stillbirth, fetal malformation, and repeated molar pregnancy.
74 patients were monitored, 83.78% of them had uncomplicated pregnancy and labor, 4.05% had the abortion, 4.05% had second molar pregnancy, 2.7% had pre-eclampsia, 5.40% had preterm labor. Moreover, stillbirth and malformation did not occur in this study even after chemotherapy treatment. There was not any significant correlation between age, BMI, parity, and chemotherapy duration with pregnancy outcomes.
The outcomes of pregnancy after chemotherapy with actinomycin-D is similar to the general population who did not have chemotherapy. The abortion rate and repeated molar pregnancy were similar between population and sample too. Thus, the study shows that the cured patients with low-risk GTN have as much chance of having a normal pregnancy as normal women. In other words, treatment with actinomycin-D does not have any adverse effect in future pregnancies.