Treatment of metastatic trophoblastic disease with poor prognosis

Fifty-one patients are presented who were treated for poor-prognosis gestational trophoblastic disease by physicians at Duke University Medical Center (Southeastern Regional Trophoblastic Disease Center) between 1968 and 1978. Disease in 72% (37 of 51 patients) is currently in remission (8 months to 10 years). Treatment was primarily by multiagent chemotherapy, with adjunctive surgery and radiation therapy in selected patients. Unsuccessful chemotherapy prior to treatment at this center, a prolonged interval from the antecedent pregnancy to treatment, and liver metastases portended a worse prognosis in these patients.