How much regret after gender surgery? No one knows
By Mary Laval
Genspect advisor Dr. Roberto D’Angelo along with Pablo Expósito-Campos just published a letter to the editor of the journal of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery – Global Open in response to a publication that asserted that gender assignment surgery regret is very low.
D’Angelo and Expósito-Campos point out the critical need for accuracy in this figure and that the original publication came to questionable conclusions from its analysis. D’Angelo and Expósito-Campos note that the other researchers overlooked important studies and inappropriately included others. Moreover, the publication contained significant data errors. In addition, the follow up period studied was mostly very short, for several only one or two years post-surgery, and there was high loss to follow up.
D’Angelo and Expósito-Campos note that very few of the studies had low risk for bias. In addition, most studies rated either “fair” or “poor” for quality, with none of the studies covering the new cohort of adolescent-onset trans-identification.
D’Angelo and Expósito-Campos close their published letter with the following: “In light of these numerous issues affecting study quality and data analysis, their conclusion that ‘our study has shown a very low percentage of regret in TGNB population after GAS’ is, in our opinion, unsupported and potentially inaccurate.”
In a field of study that has become highly politicized, it is of paramount importance for unbiased researchers to design studies carefully and come to robust conclusions based only on strong supporting evidence.
So when someone emphatically states that gender surgery has a low regret rate, they are not actually telling the truth. The truth is that no one really knows in the long-term what the rate of regret is.