What is Vivelle-Dot?
Vivelle-Dot is an estrogen-only patch used in HRT. It contains a man-made hormone called estradiol, which works in a similar way to estrogen in the body. Using Vivelle-Dot can help to reduce menopausal symptoms like hot flashes, mood swings, night sweats, and vaginal dryness. The patch is placed on your skin, and only needs to be changed twice a week, so it’s a helpful alternative to tablets if you’d prefer not to have to take something every day.
When you take HRT, the medications you use will depend on whether or not you’ve had a hysterectomy. Normally, if you’ve had a hysterectomy, you’ll be recommended estrogen-only HRT. But if you haven’t, you’ll take combined HRT.
So, because Vivelle-Dot is an estrogen-only HRT, you can take it on its own if you’ve had a hysterectomy. If you haven’t had this procedure and your uterus is ‘intact’, you’ll need to take a progesterone medication alongside Vivelle-Dot. When it’s given as an estrogen-only treatment, you’ll use it continuously (so have a patch on every day of the month, without a break). If you’re using it alongside a progesterone treatment, you’ll normally use Vivelle-Dot as a ‘cyclical’ or ‘sequential’ treatment (so use it for three weeks, then take a week off, then use it for the next three weeks and so on).
An advantage of Vivelle-Dot is that it’s smaller than other patches like Climara and Estraderm (about the size of a postage stamp), so covers a smaller area and may be less likely to cause skin irritation.[1]
How does Vivelle-Dot work?
The active ingredient in Vivelle-Dot is estradiol. It’s a synthetic version of estrogen, a hormone that’s central to the female reproductive system. Estrogen plays an important role in menstruation and ovulation, and when you reach a certain age, levels of this hormone in the body start to decline. When this happens, it’s the start of menopause (the first phase is called ‘perimenopause’), and it most commonly occurs between the ages of 45 and 55.
Although it’s completely normal and natural, this drop in estrogen can cause symptoms like vaginal dryness, sleeping problems, and hot flashes. A lot of women also find that they feel more irritable and fatigued.
Vivelle-Dot patches release estradiol into the body at a measured rate, which helps to supplement falling levels of estrogen. This helps to relieve menopause symptoms, and over time you can manage the drop in estrogen more gradually by reducing the dose.
How effective is Vivelle-Dot?
Estrogen therapy is recognized as being the most effective treatment for vasomotor symptoms (also known as menopause symptoms).[2] Because patches like Vivelle-Dot deliver estrogen through the skin, they can be given in lower doses than oral tablets, and are less likely to cause side effects related to blood clotting, cardiovascular problems, and gallbladder disease.[2]
An added benefit of estrogen therapy is that it can reduce the risk of osteoporosis; a condition where the bones become fragile, and prone to breaks and fractures. A study into the effectiveness of transdermal patches (like Vivelle-Dot) at lowering loss of bone mineral density found that, in people who used estrogen patches, bone mineral density in the lower spine was 3.4% higher after one year of patch use, and 3.7% higher after two years of patch use than at baseline (or in other words, before patch use began).[3]
