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medpundit |
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Wednesday, July 17, 2002Unfortunately, even a small risk to individuals can have big consequences when applied to a large population. The study suggests that, on balance, a group of 10,000 long-term Prempro users would suffer 31 excess health crises each year (strokes, heart attacks, blood clots, breast cancers), while avoiding only 11 bone fractures and colon cancers. That’s a net increase of 20. If 100,000 people take up long-term HRT, they’ll suffer 200 of these needless events each year. A million long-term Prempro users will experience 2,000 of them annually—which means 20,000 over the course of a decade. This is no way to prevent hip fractures. In treating menopause, we are treating individuals, not society. Every drug has potential risks and side effects. If we did away with all drugs that could cause 20,000 “needless events” over a ten year time period when taken by one million people, we wouldn’t treat anything with long term medication. Newsweek also speculates on the best way to stop the medication. Should women just stop it cold turkey, or wean themselves off? "Studies will soon tell us", they say. Goodness. You would think that every woman who has ever taken estrogen in the past forty years had never stopped it before. Plenty of people have stopped taking it before. You don't have to "wean it off", you can just stop it. The method of stopping it won't make any difference in the hot flashes. Once the hormone is stopped, the hot flashes return. (For some women, but not for all.) Not everything has to be studied scientifically, sometimes experience counts. posted by Sydney on 7/17/2002 05:49:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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