Thank you for your May 2004 editorial on the Womenus Health Initiative (“Overgeneralizing WHI: What are they thinking?”). I, too, am frustrated by the spin many of our primary care colleagues put on the use of any combination of estrogen/progestogen for any purpose. What are they thinking, anyway?
At a recent dinner sponsored by a drug company that produces no estrogen products, the speaker referred to “breast-cancer–causing estrogen,” and all of us timid physicians just sat there and let him go on about statins and the like.
I wonder whether sending letters to journals read by internists, cardiologists, and other primary care physicians might help them properly interpret the data generated by the Women’s Health Initiative. I cannot tell you how hard it is to counsel patients who have been wrongly discontinued from hormone replacement therapy by some poorly informed internist.
Roslyn Chosak, MD
New Haven, Conn
Dr. Barbieri responds:
I appreciate Dr. Chosak’s comments and agree that Ob/Gyns need to help our internist colleagues place the findings of the Women’s Health Initiative in appropriate clinical perspective.
Her suggestion to send letters to journals read by internists is an excellent idea!