Menopause natural history, complications and prognosis

Overview

The symptoms of menopause typically develop in the menopausal transition years, that is define as perimenopause and start with amenorrhea for tow months and more in addition to vasomotor symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats, palpitations, and migraines.This symptoms continued until reach to postmenopause, in this stage a woman has amenorrhea for on year and vasomotor symptoms in addition to other symptoms such as vaginal atrophy, decline in libido, stress incontinence and frequency, depression, sleep disturbance.
If untreated vasomotor symptoms after approximately 7.4 years on average, women may progress to develop hypertension, atherosclerosis, and hyperlipidemia.

Common complications of menopause include:
- Cardiovascular Disease/chronic heart disease
- stroke
- Osteoporosis More than 250,000 menopausal and postmenopausal women are affected by osteoporosis.

Generally, the prognosis of menopause is good with treatment and healthy lifestyle include stop smoking and healthy diet and exercise, but untreated menopause is poor prognosis among patient with sever symptoms such as patient with early menopause and patient has high risk to developed complication associated with menopause.