[Hormone replacement Up-to-date. Practical tips for hormone replacement therapy in women]

It appears that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has gone through a major turnabout from the mainstay of therapy in the last half century to a rather obscure treatment modality associated with an array of risks after the publication of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) trial results that called HRT into question, which has led to clinicians unnecessarily shying away from it despite the benefits it offers. As a matter of course, HRT as a drug therapy must not be used uncritically, and the reason for its use needs to be clarified. While clinicians need to know that there is an adequate consensus on the validity of HRT to support its use for the treatment of hot flashes and vaginal/urethral atrophy as well as for the treatment and prevention of osteoporosis, they also need to be fully aware of the absolute and relative contraindications that do exist for HRT. I believe that HRT has still much to offer as a therapeutic option when it is prescribed appropriately as illustrated in this article, and hope I have brought the current consensus on HRT to bear on clinical practice in this article, to help clinicians, who may be tempted to overestimate its risks, to get their bearings on HRT.