Abstract
Gestational Trophoblastic Disease encompasses a group of pregnancy-related disorders that derive from the placenta. Taking Leventhal’s Common Sense Model as a starting point, this study aims to investigate how illness perception could influence patients’ psychological adaptation to these rare diseases. Thirty-seven women completed: the Illness Perception Questionnaire-Revised, the Beck Depression Inventory Short Form, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and the Fertility Problem Inventory. Results show that the perception of severe illness consequences significantly predicts the level of anxiety patients reported at the time of questionnaire completion. Furthermore, mental representations of illness present a significant association with infertility-related stress. Specifically, the belief in the efficacy of the treatment results in fewer feelings of discomfort and isolation from family and social context due to infertility-related problems. Since patients’ illness perception was found to have a specific impact on both anxiety and infertility-related stress, this variable should be considered in the planning of a clinical intervention.
Highlights
Taking Leventhal’s Common Sense Model as a starting point, this study aims to investigate how illness perception could influence patients’ psychological adaptation to these rare diseases
We aimed to assess if illness perception predicted the level of anxiety, depression, and perceived infertility-related stress reported by women who had been diagnosed with Gestational Trophoblastic Disease (GTD)
Participants scored relatively low on dimensions of identity and timeline cyclical. These findings suggest that women tend to perceive GTD as a condition characterized by a relatively restrained symptomatology, and that GTD is not perceived as cyclical in nature
Summary
Gestational Trophoblastic Disease (GTD) encompasses a group of pregnancy-related. L. Carnelli et al 2 disorders that derive from the placenta. Carnelli et al 2 disorders that derive from the placenta These include the premalignant complete and partial molar pregnancies, known as hydatidiform mole (HM), the malignant invasive mole (IM), choriocarcinoma (CCA), placental site trophoblastic tumor (PSTT), and epithelioid trophoblastic tumor (ETT) [1]. The incidence of hydatidiform mole is varied, ranging from 1.5 to 6 per 1000 pregnancies in North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. In Europe and North America, CCA affects approximately 1 in 40,000 pregnancies, while for PSTT the incidence is estimated at 0.2% of all GTD; ETT is a relatively new entity and data regarding its epidemiology are scarce [1]
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