Horrific case report after genital surgery *TW distress*

18-24 yos

That is just horrendous.

My heart goes out to the young man and to his surviving family.

And as for the surgeons... How do they sleep at night?

I know it is a paper about the medical aspects, but was struck by the lack of detail / evidence for the reasons for the surgery. Basically one sentence: quality of sex life for Transwomen needs a functioning vagina’.

The patient was 18. In the UK one third of 28-24 yo are not sexually active. Many women at 18 are not yet familiar with ‘quality’ of sexual experience, and have not achieved a good quality sexual experience.

And yet this 18 yo was literally butchered in pursuit of this ‘quality’.

Was anyone else struck by the disingenuity of this statement? "The absence of a functional vagina has a negative effect on the (sexual) quality of life of biological women and transgender women."

An absolute refusal to admit that this is nothing to do with biological women. It's all about performing a mutilating operation on an adult male.

The abstract summary says: the genital surgery had a positive impact on the patients quality of life.

What??

I guess that's in the very narrow sense where you might be thinking about the "quality-adjusted life year" as a measure.

^https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year^

So "quality of life" is on one axis, and length of life is on the other axis. You could die shortly after treatment, but still claim a brief improvement on the quality of life axis.

Sorry I should have said that I can't see how ethically Drs can operate on someone so young.

I really wonder about 'informed consent' on this and other procedures for people suffering acute gender dysphoria.

For other illnesses such as anorexia nervosa or acute mental health crisis, there would be questions as to the mental capacity of someone in acute distress to give informed consent.

This is true for small procedures, and I would expect the larger and more risky a procedure is, the more certain you would need to be as a surgical team that this person was absolutely in the right state of mind to fully understand what they were entering into and the possible complications.

18 is not a child, and most mentally healthy young adults have mental capacity given sufficient time and information. However a young age would again mean that you had to give extra time to be sure this was truly informed consent.

There is also the question of coercion - someone performing this surgery needs to be sure that the person consenting is not being coerced or incentivised in some way. I'm not sure this would be the domain of a surgeon and would require a psychological assessment - was this carried out in specific relation to surgery?

Failed on so many counts. I'm of the personal opinion that this is deeply immoral and unethical surgery and the harms cannot be justified.

Back in the 1980s/90s I was working in cardiology. I don't want to out the person so I will be vague.

We had a patient who had had what is now called 'top surgery' but then the Drs found a heart condition and they decided the 'bottom 'surgery' was too risky.

This was an adult of sound mind and I am not sure whether they should have been allowed the op as they understood the risks.

The only way this surgery could be in any way justified is if the outcome of not operating was far worse.

Selling the propaganda that this is “life-saving” healthcare and the alternative is death has done a number on patients and even some doctors - although I have no doubt there are one or two of the latter whose desire to make a name for themselves in an experimental area makes them first cousins to Mengele. But there is no wave of trans suicides from those who have to wait for surgery. On the contrary, the only long-term study to date suggests suicidal ideation increases after genital surgery, and 85-90% of adult transwomen certainly seem pretty damned happy to keep their penis.

This young man was sold a lie and his death was a needless waste. I’m so angry about this.

Yes I read that and was like wtf!!!

The abstract summary says: the genital surgery had a positive impact on the patients quality of life.

What??

Perhaps your post ought to be shown to those idiotic teachers in our schools telling our children that puberty is optional along with some graphic images of this poor unfortunate to demonstrate why that is not, has not been and will never be the case.

I couldn't bear to read the article but it sounds like this is the key point re the puberty blockers. How can any p re pubescent child make an informed decision about this?

That poor kid. You get the impression from that report that the medical team responsible would shrug and say even a tooth extraction can go wrong for a tiny percentage of people.

I did blink on the 'has been found to reduce behavioural problems' line explaining why this massively invasive surgery is justifiable.

Trans Day of Remembrance….

don’t forget those trans kids who lost their lives in the pursuit of a mis-sold dream.

Bowel vaginoplasty appears to have been used for some time to treat women, primarily those with Mayer Rokitansky Syndrome (MRKH) which is a DSD. This paper from 2006 suggests the results for those women are reasonable. It is not the only method for treating MRKH.

https://www.auajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1016/S0022-5347%2806%2900337-5

Reading the original paper it looks like anastomotic leakage (leakage from where the bowel was joined together again after a portion was removed) was part of the problem but the paper also says that a side to side anastomosis was used rather than an end to end; are there any surgeons here who are able to explain why that choice was made. I've worked in health care and seen plenty of bowel resections but I have never seen a side to side anastomosis used to join bowel together again, I've only seen the end to end technique used.

This is horrific. Eighteen year olds are not equipped to understand this level of complication.

I have lost all faith and respect for 'doctors'.

Sadly, I suspect nothing will come of this...Doctors are virtually untouchable!

Thank you. I had to turn my VPN on and it worked.

To read the full article follow that latest link. It brings you to the 1st page. On the left of the vertical line is a box called “save” and you can download it from there. HTH.

I managed to read it via VPN. Absolutely horrific. So young. It does seem like an extremely rare case but I'm not minimising it by saying that, but again how many such cases happen with out our knowledge? .

Omg that poor child. Those doctors deserve to be struck off

It must be because I'm not in the UK.

No link added.

The link @thenightsky posted does work. Here you go again: