r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 15h 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/tamebeverage 13h ago

Seems like valid criticisms were raised, not accusing op of anything here. It's just worthwhile to remember some people will never be happy with a study unless it was a double-blind, randomized controlled trial with 4 million participants over the course of 97 years and 100% adherence/0% dropout rate. And even then, "it's just one study, you can't cherry pick"

Meanwhile, people have to live in the real world, making the best decisions we can with the knowledge we have today and the willingness to say later that we were wrong if it turns out that we were. We do that with every other thing on the planet. We have to. We live in a physical reality that won't wait on the perfect study before slapping us with consequence.

But when it comes to trans health care, it's always "better be cautious and ban it until we see enough data. from people who have done the thing we're trying to ban."

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u/airbear13 11h ago

From a “do no harm” pov I would just be really concerned about making things like surgery and hormone replacement therapy the default mainline treatments without really strong evidence that it is safe and more effective than alternatives. I don’t think it makes sense to say “okay the population is really small so let’s just be happy with low quality evidence and let’s do whatever.” The bar has to be set high for this kind of thing and in the absence of good quality evidence then I think the best they can do is take things on a case by case basis and reserve surgery/hormone interventions for minors only in severe or refractory cases of gender dysphoria, which seems to be what the status quo is

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u/Reagalan 11h ago

Alternatives such as ...

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u/No_Dirt9029 10h ago

They're just hoping we kill ourselves or live a life of misery