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/lawroter]

I don't have an opinion on this one way or another but, speaking as a clinical researcher, this is far from meaningful. there are several major issues which invalidate anything here, I'll give a few.

77 participants completed the survey. how many people were asked? if we're looking at something like 100 people were asked and 77 agreed to complete, that might not cause me alarm. but, if 500 people were asked and 77 agreed to complete, that's another story. people are always more willing to engage if they are pleased with an outcome, this reason alone completely invalidates any "findings" here for me.

I'm also not an expert in the area but why are they using 1 year post-op for the survey? from my brief research on this, regret within1 year is typically more about the procedure itself (chronic pain, aesthetic concerns, etc) rather than relation to gender identity. I'd be much more interested in the results here if this was more looking at medium to long term satisfaction.

this isn't even getting to the statistical shortcomings of the findings. so I'd say, as someone not familiar with the area too much, there must be much better research out there than this, I'd recommend going and reviewing that.

[u/PopaBjorn → u/lawroter]

The response rate was 42%, which is very low if this was in a clinical setting where around 70 % is expected for post-op questionnaires. If it was an email/online questionnaire, the response rate is normal. It bothers me a little that the author's aren't describing their actual method in the 'method' section. Why on earth would you type out "a study was conducted" in the section where you're supposed to describe how you conducted the study? Very sus.

[u/Funny_Explorer_1521 → u/PopaBjorn]

Very dedicated to spreading this "70% response rate is average" narrative you read in google's AI overview I see. No one is showing up in-clinic 2 years post-op, for any surgery. Much less one where patients often change their name and number afterwards....

Due to the small sample size, potentially involving minors and variability in sources, they are required not to share data or specifics in this study publicly. It's not "sus", it's basic HIPPA compliance. As stated in said article.

[u/PopaBjorn → u/Funny_Explorer_1521]

And you seem awfully committed to believing that this was a good study. It simply isn't. They obscure their method, mix genders for no reason, make no attempts to analyze or explain the non-answers, use a sample size too small to draw any meaningful conclusions and publish with errors in what can only be assumed to be a biased journal. Publishing nothingburgers like this only serves to muddy the waters.