Adapted for the Canadian edition by Alan Gerulath, MD
Gestational trophoblastic disease (GTD) is a rare cancer that develops from an abnormal fertilized egg. Of all the cancers that afflict women, it is one of the most commonly cured. Even when it is metastatic, the survival rate is extremely high.
The cure rate depends on the cell type, the extent of disease, the duration of time from the onset of the initial pregnancy to the start of therapy, the sites of metastases, the type of pregnancy before the development of GTD and earlier therapy. In some cases, it can also depend on the degree of elevation of the serum beta human chorionic gonadotropin (ßHCG), a protein produced by a normal pregnancy as well as by all the different GTD cell types. It can be detected in the blood and urine and is an extremely sensitive tumor marker for GTD. It is measured often during both therapy and follow-up to measure the response to treatment and to detect recurrent disease.
