Symptom Checker
Step 4: Read and complete the decision guide to learn more about your symptoms.
Hot Flashes
Because estrogen can stimulate breast cancer cells to grow, your history of breast cancer makes it unwise for you to take estrogen in order to relieve hot flashes.
In one study of breast cancer patients, 434 women who had previously been treated for breast cancer were randomly assigned to receive two years of estrogen to relieve menopause symptoms. A portion of these women were also treated with progesterone. Within two years, the breast cancer patients who had been treated with estrogen were seen to have a recurrence rate for their cancers that was three times the usual rate. This study was stopped early, in 2003, because it did not seem safe to study this treatment any further in breast cancer patients.
You will need to consider non-estrogen treatments if you are bothered by your hot flashes.
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