Women’s health symposia tour in the Baltic countries
3 days – 3 countries – 3 symposia. From the 24th to the 26th September, 2018, three women’s health symposia took place in the three Baltic countries Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
October 15, 2018
The symposia were co-organized by Zeller and its local partner company Sirowa. At each symposium, a renowned Swiss gynecologist presented her experiences of two significant women’s health concerns: premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and menopause.
PMS refers to a variety of emotional and physical symptoms in women that occur in the second half of the menstrual cycle, such as breast tenderness, bloating, irritability, mood swings and so on. PMS affects a large number of women and it is estimated that 90% of women in the reproductive years experience at least one PMS symptom (Dennerstein L. et al. Menopause Intl, 2012). The lecturer from Switzerland introduced the Swiss interdisciplinary consensus guideline for the diagnosis and management of PMS and discussed the advantages and disadvantages of various treatments. These included herbal therapy with Vitex agnus castus at 20mg/day, which is also recommended among others as a first-line therapy according to the Swiss consensus guideline (Stute P. et al., Gynecol Endocrinol, 2017).
Menopause is a stage of the woman’s life in which the female hormones estrogen and progesterone decrease and the menstrual cycle comes to a stop. This occurs on average at about 51 years of age. At the symposia, the Swiss gynecologist shared her experience with the various treatment options for menopause, including menopausal hormone therapy, anti-depressants as well as herbal treatments such as with Cimicifuga racemosa (black cohosh). In addition, a recent as yet unpublished study on the effect of Cimicifuga racemosa on metabolic parameters in women with menopausal symptoms (CIMBOLIC study) was presented.
About 150 local gynecologists participated in these events to learn more about the up-to-date treatment options for these indications and to appreciate the perspective of a Swiss gynecologist. As a result, these gynecologists could gain important insights for their clinical work.