Frequency of molar pregnancies in a tertiary care hospital: A review of pathology department records

Abstract

Objective: The aim of the study was to establish the prevalence of molar pregnancies in one of the tertiary care hospitals in Karachi, Pakistan, and to evaluate the histopathology variables and maternal age.

Methodology: This observational retrospective study was carried out in the Department of Histopathology, Dow Medical College (2019-2024), on 385 biopsy records. The inclusion criteria included full/partial hydatidiform moles and retained products of conception (RPOC). The SPSS v25 was used to analyze data of maternal age, type of biopsy, and histopathology with descriptive statistics.

Results: Out of 385 reviewed cases, the molar pregnancies were found in 28.3% of the reviewed cases, and complete moles (40.06) were the most common. Preponderance was on younger women (16-30 years, 74.8%), RPOC (56.9) was the most common type of biopsy. Rare were invasive moles (0.32) and choriocarcinoma (0.63). Histopathology showed that there were vesicular villi (30.31%) and trophoblastic proliferation (25.45%), which meet diagnostic criterion.

Conclusions: The frequency of molar pregnancies and especially complete moles is very high which implies the necessity of a higher level of diagnostic accuracy and local epidemiological surveillance. Future investigations using diverse centers (e.g., DNA genotyping) should be conducted in order to narrow-down molar pregnancy sub-classification.