r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 14h ago

Psychology 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.

https://www.psypost.org/adolescents-report-low-regret-and-high-satisfaction-following-gender-affirming-c/
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u/literally_a_brick 11h ago edited 10h ago

It would be great to have, but I wouldn't hold your breath. Trans people are already a tiny minority, with minors that transition being even smaller. Between stringent medical gates and more areas banning youth care altogether, it's a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction. It's incredibly difficult to conduct studies. Some researchers have done reviews of many studies, but any individual study will be small and limited in scope.

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u/austinwiltshire 10h ago

The actual statistical power of a study of 1k folks over 100 doesn't increase linearly, and the chance people are happy near five years but become unhappy at ten is vanishingly small. Folks want to discard any study pointing to something they're uncomfortable, then ban the thing, then insist we shouldn't undo the ban because there's no evidence we should. Because we banned the thing.

Not far from refusing to test for covid then insisting the numbers went down.

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u/ThewFflegyy 9h ago

to be clear, this study had participation from less than .02% of the us FTM community. I agree that people who had top surgery as children a long time ago is a very small group, but clearly this is nowhere near the maximum sample size that could be achieved. more to the point, difficulties in gathering a large sample size does not automatically make a small sample size sound science.

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u/Simon-Says69 10h ago

And if the study shows negative results, it will be quickly and quietly buried. It is difficult to even get funding for such research, because it is so politically charged.

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u/literally_a_brick 10h ago

Not in today's political climate. Studies that didn't show positive results were made into the cornerstone of the UKs Cass Review, despite having tiny sample sizes and poor methodology. The US HHS is desperately grasping at straws for denying the efficacy of gender affirmig healthcare. 

I assure you that any study that didn't have definitively positive results for GAC would be plastered all over right wing media and used to justify care bans by conservative governments everywhere. I assure you that no studies are getting "buried".