As Reuters reported in October, a growing number of the children receiving care at the 100-plus gender clinics across the United States are opting for medical interventions – puberty-blocking drugs, hormones and, less often, surgery. And they are doing so even though strong scientific evidence of the long-term safety and efficacy of these treatments for children is scant.
That has led to a split among gender-care specialists: those who urge caution to ensure that only adolescents deemed well-suited to treatment after thorough evaluation receive it, and those who believe that delays in treatment unnecessarily prolong a child’s distress and put them at risk of self-harm.
In October, researchers at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine published a paper showing a 389% increase in gender-affirming chest surgeries performed nationally from 2016 to 2019 on patients under age 18. The total of 1,130 procedures during the period, nearly all of them for chest masculinization, represents a weighted estimate based on records from more than 2,000 U.S. medical facilities.
In 2021, about 42,000 children and teens across the United States received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, nearly triple the number in 2017, and nearly double the number from 2020, according to data Komodo compiled for Reuters.
WASHINGTON (Feb 23, 2023) -
People with gender dysphoria taking hormone replacements as part of gender affirmation therapy face a substantially increased risk of serious cardiac events, including stroke, heart attack and pulmonary embolism, according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology's Annual Scientific Session Together With the World Congress of Cardiology.
5/22/2023 10:47 PM (edited)