Cefaléia e Terapia de Reposição Hormonal

Abstract

In occidental countries, more than 30% of the female population are in the postmenopausal period. Approximately 30% of these women suffer from typical clinical symptoms from the climacterium, such as vasomotor symptoms, related to “hot flushes”, nocturnal sweating, restlessness, mood alteration, irritability and tendencies to depression, requiring medical treatment. The hormone replacement therapy (HRT) abolishes specific symptoms from menopause in more than 90% of the patients. Unspecific symptoms, such as headaches, answer to HRT as well as to placebo. The goals from this work were: to describe tendencies in prevalence of headaches in women receiving HRT; to describe recommendations to prevent or improve the episodes of headaches and also to describe indications of headaches being a contraindication to HRT. The method used for this work was the bibliographic review on scientific literature related to the topic from the last eight years. As discussion, we concluded that headaches and migraines are relative contraindications to HRT; the transdermic pathway seems to be more acceptable from patients who have had migraine crises before the hormone therapy; it is not a proved fact that HRT for itself causes migraines; migraines do not constitute specific symptoms from menopause and can be related to many other causes; the relation risk/benefit supports the use of HRT.