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By Kathryn Doyle
Reuters Health

The extra healthcare expenses and lost productivity of menopausal women with untreated menopausal flashes could cost the U.S. immeasureable dollars each year, a new study suggests.

Three-quarters of postmenopausal women experience hot flashes, which will include night sweats and panic disorder and infrequently accompany other menopause symptoms like disturbed sleep, irritability, trouble concentrating and short-term memory problems.

\”Not everybody who\’s menopausal flashes sees an impression on their own capability to function function or even function in your house,\” but some do, said lead author Dr. Philip Sarrel of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

Around nine million women inside U.S. currently have problems with severe hot flashes, via the best estimate, said Sarrel, an emeritus professor while in the departments of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, and Psychiatry.

\”In days gone by it wouldn\’t are anywhere near that number a result of the make use of hormone replacement,\” he told Reuters Health.

In 2002, the Women\’s Health Initiative discovered that using hormones to help remedy menopausal symptoms could add to the risk of cancer of the breast, heart problems and stroke, and rehearse of hormone therapy dropped off dramatically, he said.

The new information was held by Noven Pharmaceuticals Inc., makers of hormonal and non-hormonal therapy of menopausal menopausal flashes, including Combipatch, Minivelle and Brisdelle.

Sarrel brilliant team used data from 1999 to 2011 to check 250,000 women with untreated menopausal flashes for the same wide variety of women of similar age, region as well as other characteristics who didn\’t have menopausal flashes.

All the girls had commercial health care insurance.

Women with menopausal flashes used more healthcare services, particularly outpatient services, than women without symptoms, they found. The additional services added about $1,336 more per person per annum as compared with women without symptoms, as well as the indirect economic loss on account of missed work was another $770 per woman each and every year.

Some in the extra healthcare costs arrive from trying to diagnose and treat problems, like chest pains, without addressing the source explanation for menopausal symptoms. A coronary angiogram, such as, costs $10,000, Sarrel said.

Employers, paying premiums to insurance firms, shoulder those costs, he added.

Sarrel blamed the inadequate management of hot flashes on poor communication between girls and doctors.

The women \”all experience an annual visit but no person asks them about menopausal flashes, it is simply not asked,\” he explained.

\”Women don\’t bring it up as the fear is I believe I\’m having 10 to 14 hot flashes daily, the doctor will probably say \’go on hormones,\’ and they are generally terrified of using hormones,\” Sarrel said.

Writing within the journal Menopause, the authors attribute a loss of profits more than $300 million each year to untreated menopausal flashes just for the girls in their study.

For the complete population of U.S. women with untreated hot flashes, the loss could come upon vast amounts of dollars.

For some women, the symptoms may very well be controlled with hormonal therapies costing around $40 a month, Sarrel said.

\”It will not be coincidental that this most rapid decline within the rate of women\’s work ability occurs at 51 years, the height of menopausal symptoms,\” said Dr. Henk Oosterhof, an OB/GYN at Hospital Nij Smellinghe inDrachten, The low countries.

Estimates in Holland also attribute the losing of above 100 million euro each and every year to untreated menopausal symptoms, Oosterhof told Reuters Health by email.

Less than one in five women with menopausal flashes seeks treatment, with hormone replacement one of the most efficient option, individuals do face a great deal of prejudice, he stated.

The basic drug alternatives are oral, transdermal or vaginal estrogen therapies, progesterones, combination estrogen and progesterones, selective estrogen receptor modulators and antidepressants, said Marco DiBonaventura, vp of health outcomes within the survey firm Kantar Health in New york city.

Non-drug alternatives, like relaxation therapies or exercise, have not been that will control menopausal flashes, but experts say they\’re unlikely to hurt and may also give assistance with other menopause symptoms like disturbed sleep (see Reuters Health actual August 2, 2013, here: http://reut.rs/1uCs4ay).

Recent numerous studies have learned that hormone therapy prescribed before age 60 confers more benefit than risk, Oosterhof said, but each woman should talk to their doctors regarding the advantages and disadvantages of treatment. Women who may have had a hysterectomy, hormone healing is especially safe, Sarrel noted.

\”We have to raise understanding of what types of hormone treatments are harmful, as well as what kinds usually are not harmful and they are effective and life saving,\” Sarrel said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1rHyDeK Menopause, online August 25, 2014.