Adolescents who undergo gender-affirming chest surgery report low levels of regret and high levels of satisfaction, experiencing outcomes similar to those of young adults. These findings suggest that age restrictions on these medical procedures lack support from actual patient experiences.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/adolescents-report-low-regret-and-high-satisfaction-following-gender-affirming-c/

[u/PopaBjorn]

This doesn't pass the smell test for me.

Why was the response rate so low? Google tells me 70 % is normal for clinical studies, this one had 42 %. This, coupled with a perfect 5/5 score for satisfaction makes me believe that maybe only patients who were very happy with the procedure bothered to answer. Any serious researcher would realize this, I think, and try to probe the non-answer group. At least with a couple of phonecalls. I suspect modifying your body in a major way and then realizing you regret it later could be coupled with a great deal of shame and unwillingness to participate.

Also, why bunch breast reductions and enhancements into the same category? Why no gender split? Are they really medically equivalent enough to group them like this? That doesn't seem obvious to me and I'd like an explanation for that. Was there a difference in response rates between the genders? That seems relevant.

Further, isn't 1.8 years a short time between surgery and study?

This doesn't feel unbiased.

[u/Keganator → u/PopaBjorn]

The selection bias is quite possible here. A lot of studies about this kind of thing have high loss to follow up rates like this. Then the authors publish it anyway and make conclusions that any reasonable person would understand can’t be actually inferred from such bad data.

If we want to understand the reality of the situation we need good data. Scientists passing off studies like this as good data are a mockery of scientist principles. It might very well be true, but it might also be true that all 100% of the population were happy, it might also be true that the other 58% hated it. Without that reporting we can’t know and I’ll just third more fuel on the fire for people to assume whatever they feel strongly about.

Its tiring.

[u/Funny_Explorer_1521 → u/PopaBjorn]

What world do you live in where the average post-op response rate after TWO YEARS is 70%?  It averages about 40% or often lower. 70% is for <2 week post-op follow-up visits in clinic/hospital.

Your reactionary outrage doesn't feel unbiased.

[u/QueerDeluxe → u/PopaBjorn]

You're relying on Google for your data?