Menopause And Pre-Existing Conditions

Obviously, if someone has muscle skeletal complaints, osteoporosis, those can be exacerbated by the lack of estrogen.

Heart conditions. Cardiovascular changes occur during menopause. There can be adverse lipid changes. That's one of the benefits of hormone replacement therapy is that it can lessen those lipid changes and cause actually increase in HDL and lowering the LDL in patients when they're on hormone therapy. If started early, there is ...

If started late actually, hormone replacement therapy can increase someone's risk for an adverse cardiac event, because of the increased risk of clot formation. It's something that should be discussed if someone has an underlying cardiac problem, that's something that needs to be discussed between the patient's gynecologist or family doctor with the cardiologist, whoever's gonna start hormone therapy, to find out if that's gonna be what's in that patient's best interest. There are some patients with some cardiac problems that probably should not be started on hormone replacement therapy.

In some patients, menopause can occur much earlier than expected. Even in the late 30's. Usually, we don't know why someone goes through premature menopause. Generally what we do when that occurs is we do do an evaluation to look for rheumatic diseases, autoimmune diseases, because those can be associated with premature menopause. Menopause before the age of 40 is considered abnormal and requires a workup.