Induced menopause can occur due to surgery or necessary medical intervention, causing immediate symptoms such as hot flashes and mood swings. Surgically induced menopause occurs when ovaries are removed, while medically induced menopause can result from cancer treatments. Women with induced menopause are at higher risk for health issues but can lead healthy lives with monitoring and medication.
Induced menopause can refer to some ways in which the ovaries stop working, ending the production of hormones such as estrogen and progesterone that help control a woman’s monthly cycle. Most women will experience regular menopause in their late 40s and early 50s, but sometimes menopause occurs much earlier due to medical necessity. This is said to be induced and can occur due to surgery or due to necessary medical intervention.
Surgically induced menopause typically occurs when a woman has to have her ovaries removed. This could treat ovarian cancer or reduce your risk, or it could be necessary in combination with a hysterectomy. This surgery, oophorectomy, causes menopause immediately. Without the ovaries, there is no ovulation and no production of essential hormones. To delay menopause, estrogen may be prescribed, but this is not possible in all cases, particularly if the reason for the oophorectomy was related to cancer or if the goal was to reduce female hormones.
The other form of inducing menopause is called medically induced menopause and this condition is also often related to cancer. Both chemotherapy and radiation treatments, regardless of where they occur in the body, can cause the ovaries to fail. Some women remain fertile after these treatments, but many are advised to consider storing their eggs before starting these treatments if they want to get pregnant in the future.
What is different between medically induced and surgically induced menopause is that the medically induced form does not occur in 100% of women who have cancer treatment. Some women will not go through menopause or may, after what appears to be menopause, start ovulating again at a later time. This would suggest that pregnancy prevention is still important even though ovulation is likely to have actually ended. Conversely, when the ovaries have been surgically removed, there is no way for the body to produce eggs or conceive.
For both types of induced menopause, the accompanying symptoms are often said to be much more drastic in the beginning. Normal menopause is gradual and still quite annoying, but induced menopause can immediately cause a series of serious symptoms, including hot flashes, vaginal dryness and mood swings; symptoms may disappear sooner. Women who have induced menopause early also need to be monitored more closely from a health perspective. They are higher risks for early heart disease, stroke, and early osteoporosis. With the monitoring and medications needed to reduce these risks, most women lead healthy lives.
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