Objectives: To investigate the management of vaginal atrophy (VA) in a population-based study. Study design: A sub-study of a cross-sectional multicenter study on 913 postmenopausal women. Main outcome measures: Management of VA was investigated on the 274 women referring having received a previous diagnosis of VA. Results: Women had received, no therapy (9.8%), systemic hormones (9.2%), intra-vaginal estrogens (44.5%) or local non-hormonal (36.5%) therapy. There was heterogeneity of treatments. Local therapies were given in cycles, and used for a length of time ranging from 1 to 12 months. At the time of the investigation 59.5% of these women were not on treatment, either because following the physician’s indication (31.1%) or because spontaneously withdrawing from treatment (68.9%). Reasons for withdrawing from therapy were insufficient symptom relief (46.6%), messiness (24.3%), difficulty in application (7.8%) and vaginal discharge (1.9%). At the time of investigation only 2.9% of treated women did not suffer from VA. Conclusions: This study underlines the presence of a great confusion about the therapy used for VA, along with patients’ dissatisfaction with actual treatments. The emerging evidence is that in real world VA remains untreated
Management of vaginal atrophy: a real mess. Results from the AGATA study
CAGNACCI, Angelo
2017-01-01
Abstract
Objectives: To investigate the management of vaginal atrophy (VA) in a population-based study. Study design: A sub-study of a cross-sectional multicenter study on 913 postmenopausal women. Main outcome measures: Management of VA was investigated on the 274 women referring having received a previous diagnosis of VA. Results: Women had received, no therapy (9.8%), systemic hormones (9.2%), intra-vaginal estrogens (44.5%) or local non-hormonal (36.5%) therapy. There was heterogeneity of treatments. Local therapies were given in cycles, and used for a length of time ranging from 1 to 12 months. At the time of the investigation 59.5% of these women were not on treatment, either because following the physician’s indication (31.1%) or because spontaneously withdrawing from treatment (68.9%). Reasons for withdrawing from therapy were insufficient symptom relief (46.6%), messiness (24.3%), difficulty in application (7.8%) and vaginal discharge (1.9%). At the time of investigation only 2.9% of treated women did not suffer from VA. Conclusions: This study underlines the presence of a great confusion about the therapy used for VA, along with patients’ dissatisfaction with actual treatments. The emerging evidence is that in real world VA remains untreatedI documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
