Hilton Head, SC—The proliferation of conflicting studies of effects of hormone replacement coupled with gloom-and-doom headlines about cancer risk are giving physicians and their female patients a hormonal headache—and then some.
Millions of women from the Baby Boom era are facing the confusing question of whether to take hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Their physicians are facing the equally perplexing task of taking existing data based on tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of women and applying it to each individual patient.
Complicating matters are some news reports that have overstated negative aspects of HRT and fail to explain limitations of studies or the fact that all increases in cancer risk associated with HRT are relative to each woman's own inherent disease risk.
"What we're facing now is a huge credibility gap," Judith Reichman, MD, of the University of California at Los Angeles and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, . . . [Full Text of this Article]
