THE USE OF HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY IN SLOVENIAN WOMEN BEFORE THE FIRST DIAGNOSIS OF BREAST CANCER

Background. The aim of our retrospective study was to collect and compare data on hormone replacement therapy prescription in Slovenian women before the first diagnosis of breast cancer and the control group of randomly selected healthy women matched by age. Patients and methods. We carried out a cross-sectional, case-control study and enrolled 1408 women aged between 50 and 69 years. They were invited to participate via a personal letter and asked to complete written questionnaire. Besides questions regarding drug intake of sex hormones and general information, questionnaire contained questions that provide reproductive data and family history of cancer. We used the independent t-test to compare the values of the means between the two groups and the chi-square statistic to determine an association for categorical data between groups. Results. In our study, significantly more women in the control group were using HRT. Although, there was not statistically significant difference in the proportion of women between the control and the experimental group using HRT for more than 5 years. There was higher proportion of women in the experimental group receiving combined HRT, but the difference was not statistically significant. Furthermore, there was also significantly higher proportion of women in the experimental group receiving systemic HRT and significantly higher proportion of women in the control group receiving local HRT preparations. Conclusions. HRT is still the most efficient way to treat debilitating menopausal symptoms. Although the linkage between the use of HRT and increased breast cancer risk is physiologically plausible, our preliminary results show that observable risk is moderate