Ovarian Hormone Therapy in Functional Menometrorrhagia
Abstract
This brief preliminary report is presented at the present time because of the gratifying results obtained from the use of cyclic estradiol benzoate and progesterone therapy in ten cases of functional menometrorrhagia. Clinical investigation is still in progress, and a more detailed record will be submitted subsequently. This method of therapy has been effective in certain stubborn cases where other methods have failed.
Browne1 has reported the successful treatment of metropathia hemorrhagica with premenstrual progesterone following curettage. The endometria of those cases which we have treated have not shown the changes found in metropathia hemorrhagica. It has been our impression from previous experience that cyclic use of the sex sterols has proved more effective in our cases. This is still to be verified.
Our application of estrone, or estradiol benzoate, and progesterone therapy has been limited to those cases of menorrhagia and/or metrorrhagia which are “functional” in character as determined by careful history, examination, assays and endometrial biopsies. Indirectly responsible organic disease and endocrine aberrations, such as hypothyroidism, must be excluded first.
Our original conception of the cyclic use of sex sterols in the treatment of functional menometrorrhagia developed as a consequence of finding low urinary assays for estrogenic substances in such a case early in 1938. This has been confirmed by assays in other cases, and has been correlated with endometrial biopsies. We felt that the condition was due to hypo-ovarianism and that the logical treatment would be an attempt to reproduce in the endometrium those changes which would. . .
