Background
: As the average lifespan in human increases, women's concerns about osteoporosis and health promotion in post menopausal are increased. Osteoporosis causes the serious health problem in postmenopausal women. In order to investigate the women'sgnition about postmenopausal osteoporosis, we carried out this study.

Methods : We selected the patients who visited to Department of Family Medicine in Asan Medical Center from April to Septemer 1994. The questionnaire included demographic characteristics, sociocultural factors and questionnaire that are constructed to know the women's recognition of osteoporosis. At this study, the respondents were 300 women in this period, we excluded ambigeous data, we analyzed 232 questionnaires.

Results : The mean age of investigated 232 subjects is 40 years old. They were composed of 78(33.6%) postmenopausal womens and 154(66.4%) premenopausal women. Both groups answered subjectively recognition of osteoporosis. Among them, twelve women answered "wellknown" the osteoporosis(6%), and seventy three cases answered "unknown" the osteoporosis(37%), "moderately known" (59%).There were significant association between recognition of osteoporosis and their educational level. There were association between recognition of osteoporosis and economical level also. The respondents were asked whether thdy would be taking hormone replcement therapy to prevent and treat osteoporosis if they were recommended to do so. Twenty seven cases answered they would not take the hormone replacement therapy. The most common cause of refusal the hormone replacement theraapy is cancer or side effect of hormone replacement therapy(29.6%). The studied subjects were significantly less likely to be interested in taking hormone replacement therapy than non-hormonal therapy.(such as exercise, calcium, diet, vitamine agent)

Conclusion : We found that recognition level of postmenopausal osteoporosis is low and studied subjects prefer to non-hormonal agent than hormonal agent to prevent and treat of osteoporosis. The most common cause of refusal the hormone replacement therapy is that they worried about cancer or side effect of hormonal replacement therapy. We concluded that correct patient education for prevention and treatment of osteoporosis is needed.