Guidance
This guideline covers assessing and treating heavy menstrual bleeding. It aims to help healthcare professionals offer the right treatments to women with heavy periods (menorrhagia) that affect their quality of life, taking into account the woman’s individual preferences.
In August 2016, we looked at new evidence on drug treatments for women with large fibroids, and made new recommendations.
We are also reviewing the evidence that supports the diagnosis and management sections of the guideline. See the guideline in development page for progress of that update.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- history, examination and investigations
- education and information
- choice of treatments
- pharmaceutical treatments
- surgical treatments
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals
- Commissioners and providers of heavy menstrual bleeding services
- Women with heavy menstrual bleeding, their families and carers
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or service users. The application of the recommendations in this guideline is not mandatory and the guideline does not override the responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or their carer or guardian.
Local commissioners and/or providers have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual health professionals and their patients or service users wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.