Clinical presentation of hydatidiform mole in northern Italy: has it changed in the last 20 years?

OBJECTIVE: This study was undertaken to evaluate whether the current clinical presentation of hydatidiform mole changed in the recent years compared with an historic group.

STUDY DESIGN: We retrieved 500 patients from our database. We compared the clinical presentation of 189 cases followed-up between 1992-2004 ("later" group) with that of a previous series of 311 patients ("earlier" group, 1970-1982). A Pearson chi2 test was performed analyzing the following variables: uterine volume, ovarian cysts, vaginal bleeding, hyperemesis, preeclampsia, and maternal age; we considered P < .05 to be significant.

RESULTS: Uterine volume corrected for gestational age (P < .0001), vaginal bleeding (P < .0001) and presence of ovarian cysts (P = .03) were significantly predominant in the "earlier" group, whereas the incidence of preeclampsia and hyperemesis were not significantly different.

CONCLUSIONS: The depiction of increased uterine volume, ovarian theca lutein cysts, and vaginal bleeding in hydatidiform mole at presentation is significantly less frequent since the extensive dissemination of ultrasound in obstetrics.