Dr P M Sarrel and fellow researchers reviewed and analysed the effect of oestrogen avoidance on mortality rates among hysterectomized women aged 50 to 59 years in the United States.
They derived a formula to relate the excess mortality among hysterectomized women aged 50 to 59 years assigned to placebo in the Women's Health Initiative randomized controlled trial to the entire population of comparable women in the United States, incorporating the decline in oestrogen use observed between 2002 and 2011.
Over a 10-year span, starting in 2002, the authors found that a minimum of 18,601 and as many as 91,610 postmenopausal women died prematurely because of the avoidance of oestrogen therapy.
