Abstract
Purpose
Little is known about how a gynecological cancer diagnosis affects a gynecologist’s decision to prescribe hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Therefore, the goal of this study was to analyze the prevalence of HRT prescription prior to and after the diagnosis of four gynecological cancers in women followed in gynecological practices in Germany.
Methods
This study included women who were diagnosed with breast, uterine, ovarian, or vulvar cancer in 281 gynecological practices in Germany for the first time between January 2011 and December 2017. The first outcome of the study was the proportion of women with at least one HRT prescription in the year prior to and in the year after cancer diagnosis. The second outcome of the study was the proportion of gynecological practices that issued at least one HRT prescription in the year prior to and in the year after cancer diagnosis.
Results
A total of 7189 women were included in this study. The proportion of women receiving at least one HRT prescription significantly decreased between the year prior to and the year after cancer diagnosis in the breast cancer (16.3% versus 2.3%) and the uterine cancer groups (13.4% versus 5.8%), but not in the ovarian cancer (17.6% versus 15.1%) and the vulvar cancer groups (10.8% versus 13.1%). Similar findings were obtained for the proportion of gynecological practices that issued at least one HRT prescription.
Conclusion
HRT prescriptions significantly decreased after the diagnosis of breast and uterine cancers but not after the diagnosis of ovarian and vulvar cancers.
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Availability of data
The data analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Code availability
The code used during the current study is not publicly available but is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Louis Jacob managed the literature searches, wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and corrected the manuscript. Karel Kostev contributed to the design of the study, performed the statistical analyses, and corrected the manuscript. Matthias Kalder contributed to the design of the study, managed the literature searches, and corrected the manuscript. All authors contributed to and have approved the final manuscript.
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The database includes only de-identified data in compliance with the provisions of German data protection laws. No ethics approval is needed for retrospective data analyses that use anonymous data in Germany.
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Jacob, L., Kostev, K. & Kalder, M. Prescription of hormone replacement therapy prior to and after the diagnosis of gynecological cancers in German patients. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol 146, 1567–1573 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-020-03185-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-020-03185-y