Surgical menopause, symptoms, and counseling strategies to improve women's quality of life

Introduction: Surgical menopause (SM) can be considered a threat to women's general health because a bilateral oophorectomy causes an abrupt drop in sex hormones, and the body's functional systems abruptly enter a new phase without preplanning. This condition endangers the quality of the physical, psychosocial, and physico-sexual life of women. Then, this study aimed to review SM, symptoms, and counseling strategies to improve the QOL of women.Materials and Methods: This narrative review article was compiled using various scientific databases including Web of Science, SID, PubMed, SCOPUS IPPF, and UNFPA, as well as articles published on national sites of SID and Iran Medex from ۲۰۰۰ to ۲۰۲۰, focusing on MESH-based keywords. By a step-by-step search, a total of ۲۳۰ identified through database searching, ۵۲ articles remained available corresponding to the goal of the research. Finally, ۲۳ articles were included in this review by considering the inclusion criteria.Findings: SM has a wide range of symptoms and complications in various vasomotor, psycho-social, physical, and sexual domains, among which vasomotor symptoms are more prevalent. Counseling strategies, in particular group consultation, can improve the quality of life (QOL) in these domains. This is because the assignment of women to the group of peers leads to mutual understanding, disclosing similar issues, using each other's experiences, identification, and increasing their awareness in the active confrontation with SM and subsequently helps to improve their QOL.Conclusion: According to our study, the increasing number of bilateral oophorectomy, on the one hand, and the undeniable side effects of hormone replacement therapy, on the other hand, reveal the increasing need to use counseling strategies owing to benefits such as low cost, efficiency, and acceptance of participants. It is, therefore, recommended to incorporate thisstrategy into the National Reproductive Health Program to proceed towards improving the QOL of menopausal women by considering the society-based socio-cultural context.

Keywords:

Menopause , Surgical menopause , Counseling , Quality of life