Navigating menopause care: Expert insights from ACOG 2024

Contemporary OB/GYN:

Please provide a brief overview of your session at ACOG 2024.

Monica M. Christmas, MD, FACOG:

Our talk is entitled, “Combating disinformation and menopause care.” And we will be discussing how social media and the internet is influencing menopause these days, good and bad, and then giving providers hopefully a toolbox and a framework for providing patients with evidence based treatment options for managing their menopause symptoms.

Stephanie Faubion, MD:

We try to simplify care and make it easier for healthcare providers to take care of women with menopause symptoms, which can be really bothersome, and also to talk about what doesn’t work for management and menopause symptoms.

Contemporary OB/GYN:

What is the clinical significance of this topic and key takeaways from the session?

Faubion:

We really hope to drive home, how there is a lot of information out there. not all of it is valid or helpful for women. And we hope to kind of cut through the noise a little bit for clinicians to help them in their practice.

Christmas:

Menopause is a ubiquitous experience, meaning 50% of the population is going to experience it, if they're lucky to live long enough. It is not a one single menopause syndrome that every single person experiences, some people will have very few to no symptoms, while other people are pretty unfortunate, they have all the symptoms that you could experience that are debilitating and a significant impact to their quality of life. And so, although we don't want to over medicalize menopause because it is a natural process, we do want to emphasize that there are symptoms that can be managed safely, and there are a number of efficacious treatment options for them. So, no one should have to suffer.

Faubion:

And it's never a one size fits all. So, individualizing therapy is important more now than ever before. And we have more options available for women too, which is great.

Contemporary OB/GYN:

What advice to you have for clinicians managing menopause in their patients?

Faubion:

Really just that there are treatment options and clinicians should feel comfortable managing this in their everyday practice because there are solutions available, and women really are suffering from these often. So, anything else?

Christmas:

Yeah, and I think it was really important, there's not just one treatment, sometimes it takes a multimodal approach, where we are utilizing lifestyle modifications too, as well as treatments for the symptoms that they might be experiencing so that we are attacking all of the aspects that sometimes the aging process brings.