03/11/2025
NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) issued its first guideline on menopause diagnosis and management in November, ten years ago (2015). It was long overdue.
It was a pivotal moment which transformed menopause care in the UK. Those of us in the menopause clinics saw increasing numbers of women coming to GPs and Gynaecologists asking for the right information and support.
The guideline covered the largely clinical nature of diagnosis, judicious use of blood tests in certain situations, the drug and non-drug treatment options that could help with physical and psychological symptoms, and provided clarity on the benefits and risks of taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) concluding that - for most women benefits outright risks when HRT is used as a treatment for menopause symptoms.
The first version was a real break through. In my personal opinion, the subsequent versions/drafts have failed to live up to the expectations.
Nevertheless, a big thanks to the guideline group at the time for all the fantastic efforts at producing a document that changed clinical care for menopause for good. Here is a pic from the 2015 BBC programme where Victoria Derbyshire spoke to Prof Melanie Davies, consultant gynecologist at University College London Hospital who worked on those guidelines and Nia Fisher, Sujata Barot and Diane Danzebrink who campaigned tirelessly for better menopause care.
Let’s hope we can continue to make progress in the right direction so that everyone has access to good quality scientific evidence based menopause clinical care and information in future without any barriers.
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng23/history -development-on-12-november-2015
Last year, we wrote about how publication of new scientific data reporting a more favourable benefit/risk ratio with HRT, production of the national guidance and an increased awareness via social media have led to the significant rise in HRT prescribing and changes to menopause care in the United Kingdom. Here is the link -
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39378060/