Hormone replacement therapy after breast cancer

The authors have performed a thorough review of medical literature, attempting to find reports on using hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in women after breast cancer [1,4,5,7,8,9,11,12,15,18]. The risk factors for mammary cancer include: genetic, reproductive, body and exogenous. Among the exogenous factors, oral contraceptives and HRT are the ones most frequently referred to. Following meta-analyses, the administration of HRT before breast cancer provides for a relative risk of 1.01 - 1.07 in a short-term use, rising to 1.09 - 1.30 in a long-term use. Regarding the own and others' data, the authors estimate that chemotherapy, applied after breast cancer, develops menopause in its full clinical picture. The pathologies of the period, such as cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis, sexual disorders, Alzheimer disease, together with a decreased quality of life in general, stand for much more serious threats than the risk of breast cancer recurrence. The authors claim then that an appropriate hormone therapy should administered to women surviving breast cancer in order to eliminate or reduce the troublesome symptoms of menopause, the women to be thoroughly instructed of potential advantages and dangers of HRT.