How to treat ectopic pregnancy conservatively?

Ectopic pregnancy, also known as ectopic pregnancy, refers to an abnormal pregnancy in which the egg implants outside the female's uterine cavity after being fertilized. Its occurrence is very harmful to women's health. Therefore, female friends must seek timely treatment after detecting this phenomenon. As we all know, when a woman has an ectopic pregnancy, most doctors will use surgery to treat her, which greatly increases the risk of infertility. Therefore, many female friends will refuse surgery. So how should ectopic pregnancy be treated conservatively?

In recent years, the rate of ectopic pregnancy has been on the rise both at home and abroad, and is gradually getting younger. The number of infertile patients has increased significantly, which has put forward new requirements for obstetricians and gynecologists. They must not only treat ectopic pregnancy, but also preserve the function of the affected fallopian tube as much as possible. Due to the popularization of diagnostic techniques such as quantitative determination of blood β-hCG and vaginal ultrasound examination, the early diagnosis rate of ectopic pregnancy has been improved, and the confirmed rate of ectopic pregnancy has been continuously improved, which provides an opportunity for the choice of conservative treatment. The following are some conservative treatment methods.

1. Expectant treatment: It means that patients with ectopic pregnancy are not given special treatment, but only closely followed up and observed until the fertilized egg of the ectopic pregnancy dies and is absorbed. Because ectopic pregnancy is caused by poor embryo implantation, the embryo dies in the early pregnancy due to insufficient blood supply, nutrition and hormones, and then disappears on its own. Therefore, these patients may recover on their own without treatment. According to literature reports, for patients with ectopic pregnancy whose initial progesterone level is ≤20.4mmol/L and whose blood β-hCG decreases by 5% per day, the success rate of expectant therapy can be as high as 97%.

2. Drug treatment: Currently, the drugs used to treat ectopic pregnancy around the world include mifepristone (MIF), methotrexate (MTX), potassium chloride, prostaglandins, etc. Mifepristone (MIF) has strong anti-progestin activity, competing with endogenous progesterone for binding to progesterone receptors in the decidual tissue, thereby blocking the action of progesterone, causing decidual degeneration, decreased luteinizing hormone, corpus luteum dissolution, and blastocyst necrosis. Methotrexate (MTX) is an anti-metabolite drug and an anti-cytotoxic metabolic drug. It binds to dihydrofolate reductase, causing a disorder in the synthesis of tetrahydrofolate, ultimately inhibiting the synthesis of DNA, thereby inhibiting the proliferation of trophoblasts, destroying the villi, and causing necrosis, shedding, and absorption of embryonic tissue.