Frequency of hydatidiform mole in the rural part of Eskişehir: the first community-based epidemiological study in Turkey.

This epidemiological study was performed in order to determine the frequency of hydatidiform mole (HM) in the rural part of Eskişehir, Turkey. Four mole cases and 6,274 pregnancies were determined in 2,032, women aged 15-49 which was 85% of the target population. Mean age, mean marriage age and mean marriage duration of the interviewed women were 34.7, 19.1 and 15.6 years, respectively. The frequency of HM per 1,000 live births and per 1,000 pregnancies was 0.83 and 0.64, respectively. The frequency of HM was lower than the frequencies reported by most of the hospital-based studies. We concluded that there appears to be a need to conduct properly designed community-based studies with well-established case registry systems to find the real incidence of HM in Turkey.