She replaced the oral estrogen with a patch.

Side effects that can occur with all forms of estrogen but are more frequent with oral estrogen include:

Will taking oral estrogen remove them?

Active liver disease (oral estrogen stresses the liver; an estrogen patch or cream does not).

Vaginal estrogen may be used by women with liver or gallbladder disease, for whom oral estrogen is not recommended.

Because oral estrogen can be hard on the liver, people with liver damage should not take it.

While some experts believe that estrogen patches may be safer than oral estrogen in other ways, it's too early to know.

The bottom line: Consider alternative approaches to see if one or several together can control your menopause symptoms before turning to oral estrogen or combination HT.

You may be able to use an alternative to oral estrogen that bypasses the liver, such as estrogen delivered from a skin patch (transdermal) or vaginal cream.