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Logically, long term hormone replacement therapy cannot be recommended

  1. Kishore Shetty, general practitioner (kishore_shetty@hotmail.com)
  1. Pallion Health Centre, Sunderland SR4 7XF
  2. Bremen State Cancer Registry
  3. Bremen Institute for Prevention Research and Social Medicine, Centre for Public Health, University of Bremen, Linzer Strasse 8-10, D-28359 Bremen, Germany

    EDITOR—Stevenson and Whitehead are unable or unwilling to draw the logical conclusion from the women's health initiative study. 1 2 Long term hormone replacement therapy cannot be recommended as the risks associated with it are more than the benefits.

    The editorial shows the difficulty we have in telling women the truth. Hormone replacement has been recommended to women more on promises and is based on very poor evidence of benefits. Even the recommendation for prevention of fracture is based on weak evidence.3 Stevenson and Whitehead urge the use of non-medroxyprogesterone based preparations and lower doses of equine oestrogen on a theoretical basis. I hope that general practitioners won't get into the farce of changing treatment on the basis of this advice and giving the patients the impression that they know what they are doing.

    The authors point out that the …

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