Palette of choices emerges to replace hormone therapy.

Byline: Patricia Anstett

Out of the summer's hormone replacement therapy chaos, women and their doctors are rewriting the rules of managing menopause symptoms.

It's tougher, that's for sure, but they have a new palette of treatment options.

For the first time in 60 years, there is no single pill doctors prescribe.

Orders for Premarin, an estrogen pill, and its sister drug, Prempro, an estrogen and progestin combination tablet, dominated physicians' prescription practices for six decades, until July, when the federal Women's Health Initiative halted a large study using Prempro.

Findings showed that long-term use of Prempro did more harm than good. It slightly increased the risk of a woman having a heart attack, stroke and blood clots in the legs. It's unclear whether lower doses of different types of estrogen _ or estrogen alone _ offer more benefits than risks. Good answers won't be available for years, even a decade or more. But women are demanding answers today.

Here's what's emerging as the new thinking about menopause, and a few of the buzzwords presented at the North American Menopause Society's annual meeting in Chicago last month.

The society's official menopause recommendations are listed on the organization's Web site,…