Women's attitudes towards menopause and hormone replacement therapy.
OBJECTIVE
To determine how women aged 50 years or more feel about menopause, and their knowledge, use of and attitude toward hormone replacement therapy (HRT).


METHODS
All study participants resided in a single urban community in central Israel and were selected at random from the computerized government registry. Responses were collected by either telephone interview (n = 171) or mailed questionnaire (n = 41) and were analyzed for the group as a whole and by different demographic and attitudinal factors.


RESULTS
Most (80%) of the women had a positive or neutral attitude to menopause. More than 80% had heard of HRT, 55% of whom from a physician. Of these, 12% were currently using HRT and 9.5% had done so in the past. Varied reasons were offered for starting or stopping treatment.


CONCLUSIONS
Although the great majority of the participants had heard of HRT, and most of these had spoken about it with a doctor, only a small percentage were currently under therapy or had been in the past. We believe gynecologists should devote more effort to public education, in that those women who had discussed HRT with their physician were more likely to use it.
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Kaplan Hospital, Rehovot, Israel.
G
G
Blumberg
B
B
Kaplan
D
D
Rabinerson
G A
GA
Goldman
E
E
Kitai
A
A
Neri
D000368:Aged; D001290:Attitude; D015914:Estrogen Replacement Therapy / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D007557:Israel; D008593:Menopause / Q000523:psychology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D011897:Random Allocation; D012494:Sampling Studies; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires