More evidence that surgery is beneficial

Heya everybody,

It’s the weekend and the sun is shining!

I have been busy updating my list of studies, but I just wanted to quickly focus on new studies and articles about the effectiveness of treatment.

• Italian researchers Prunas, Hartmann, et al. have published a study called “Psychosocial outcome and quality of sexual life after sex reassignment surgery: An Italian multicentric study” in the Journal of Sexual Medicine (2015). Their long-term follow-up of about 77 transsexual respondents showed that regrets after surgery are exceedingly rare (less than 1.5 %), satisfaction is high and quality of life increases.
  While the results are very positive, the study suffers from the same issue many long-term studies have – low response rates. Only 37 % of questionnaires were returned. With low response rates it’s anybody’s guess whether the participants of the study were representative of the overall population of treated transsexuals. However, this is the data available.

• Finnish scientists Mattila, Heinonen, et al. have published an article in Duodecim (2015) stating that Gender dysphoria is effectively alleviated by sex reassignment treatments. Quality of life is improved among the majority of patients, and regrets are rare.

• Lauren Schmidt and Rachel Ravine from Yale respectively Pennsylvania State University in the US have published a review of longitudinal outcome data evaluating psychological well-being and quality of life among transgender individuals who have undergone cross-sex hormone treatment or sex reassignment surgery in Endocrinology and Metabolism Clinics of North America (2015). Unfortunately, the published abstract doesn’t include results and I have not been able to get hold of a full-text copy. If you know what their conclusions are, please send me a mail.

Oh, and in other news the Vatican has stated transsexuals can’t become godparents. Because Jesus said so. No wait, he didn’t. But it’s something they are really sure of, like they are or were of the existence of demons, geocentrism, infallibilty of the pope, unbaptised children going to hell or limbo, etc. Anyway, naturally, your body’s appearance must determine your fate – the soul, the mind, the person, the inner qualities are all completely irrelevant in this theology.

Well, back to the real world – I haven’t yet uploaded the latest additions to my reference pages, but am hopeful to do that this weekend. Take care!