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03/05/2013 This past week there has been a lot of news emanating from the FDA that concerns menopausal and perimenopausal women. I would like to share some of this with you. A week ago the FDA, without using an Advisory Panel of outside experts, approved Ophena (generic name Ospemifene) for “treatment of moderate to severe dyspareunia (medical term for painful intercourse) a symptom of vulvar and vaginal atrophy due to menopause (the vaginal changes seen with no more estrogen production)�...
Many of you may have seen the article in the New York Times and other news media outlets relative to the breast cancer drug tamoxifen. As many of you know, I was involved in the STAR trial which compared tamoxifen and raloxifene for breast cancer prevention. Much of my academic work has been involved in the ultrasound appearance of the uterus in patients receiving tamoxifen therapy. I've had a long standing interest in the treatment of estrogen receptor positive breast cancers and selective...
An article on the front page of the New York Times was entitled “FDA is Wary of Lengthy Use of Bone Drugs”. Many of my patients or else members of their family may be taking medication to help reduce osteoporotic fracture. Some of these women are on drugs mentioned in this article and other women are not. Such information may be confusing and frightening to many patients and so I believe it is worthy of discussion in this space. (more…)...
There was an article in the New York Times by Tara Parker-Pope entitled “The annual appointment loses some relevance”. It was about the highly publicized, but not so very different, pap smear guidelines by the USPSTF (United States Preventative Services Task Force). The guidelines had already been changed several years ago making the recommendation for less screening in some women. At that time, as a member of the Editorial Board of Contemporary ObGyn, I wrote a piece entitled “If it...