Should HRT get a second chance?

FOR years, Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) has had a bad press after a study published in 2002 linked it to increased rates of breast cancer and strokes.

This prompted widespread panic among the medical profession as well as the public and cast a long shadow over it.

HRT is in the news again — this time because new evidence suggests it can help the brain and even stave off memory loss.

Could it be time to rethink HRT? When the original study that caused so much concern was analysed in depth, it emerged that while HRT can be risky for some groups of women, for others the benefits actually far outweigh the risks.

Doctors and patients must remember that while sometimes speedy action is warranted and undoubtedly saves lives when responding to health scares, as the HRT story shows, we can be too hasty to dismiss something on evidence that doesn’t withstand scrutiny.

The fact is, things are often not black or white in medicine. But nuance is something that even doctors struggle with.

It’s a particular problem with specialists who all too often fall into the trap of viewing things from their narrow range of expertise.

So we had gynaecologists insisting that HRT was fantastic, while oncologists and cardiologists denounced it. The truth was somewhere in the middle.

Like any treatment, HRT has risks and benefits: and the fact is that, for some women, it’s a valuable medicine. I’M USUALLY a great fan of the Duchess of Cambridge, but I take issue with a speech she gave at the Royal Society of Medicine this week, in which she argued that children need lessons in becoming parents. I can’t believe she’d really thought that through. Don’t they have enough to learn at school already? And what on earth could you realistically teach them that will have any benefit for something that, hopefully, they won’t need for years? The toughest part of parenting is coping with teenagers — how would you teach a teenager to parent a teenager? It’s ludicrous. Focus instead on ensuring that they grow up to be happy, thoughtful and well rounded. that’s what will make them good parents.