[Hormone replacement therapy in menopause and cancers]

The long term outcome analysis of estrogen replacement therapy shows that the carcinologic risk is far more inferior than the osseous and cardiovascular risks of which the prevention is ensured by estrogen. In the same way, the quality of life improvement during the years following menopause is important. For a female population without personal risk of breast cancer, the substitutive hormone therapy offers numerous advantages which have been for a long time refused to women with previously treated breast cancer. Any dogmatic behaviour is presently justified. On the contrary, the hormonal replacement therapy requires beforehand an analysis as exact as possible of the risks of its prescription as of its non-prescription and a responsibility taking shared between the physician and his patient. The progresses of the molecular biology and the expansion of randomized trials will permit with no doubt to recognize more easily for each patient, even the one who would have been previously treated for a breast cancer, the respective impact of carcinologic, cardiovascular and osseous risks.