One of the most pernicious lines of attacks used to denigrate transgender people has been “transition regret” — the notion that a significant number of patients who undergo gender affirming treatment will go on to feel badly about the process.
But new research finds that hormone therapy, one of the most common treatments in trans medicine, has a phenomenally low rate of regret — lower, in fact, than common procedures like knee replacement surgery.
According to the study, published in JAMA Pediatrics and reported by the Washington Post, the vast majority of patients who undergo hormone replacement therapy (HRT) as teenagers have no regrets years later. To reach that conclusion, researchers followed 372 transgender and gender-diverse people who chose to go through with hormone therapy.
The average participant was around 16 when they began hormone therapy, and around 21 when the survey results were collected.
The numbers are stark: of those who do undergo HRT, nearly 97 percent of participants affirmed it was the right choice five years later. Just 2.7 percent said they regretted the therapy, which included seven who said the treatment harmed them.
For context, that’s a lower dissatisfaction rate than common orthopedic procedures like knee replacement surgery, which has a regret rate ranging between 10 and 20 percent, depending on what data you examine.
The satisfaction rate for hormone replacement is slightly higher than even the rosiest findings around hip replacement, where only around five percent of patients express regret.
Though less than 0.1 percent of youth in the US will ever undergo HRT, the findings support past research which found that gender affirming care is an overwhelming net benefit for trans youth — contrary to the messaging from right-wing politicians who hone in on the regrets of a handful of vocal detransitioners.
As child and adolescent psychiatrist Scott Leibowitz told WaPo, the new research “adds to the growing evidence base that demonstrates individualized gender-affirming care can be beneficial for a young person.”
“This study adds to the importance of working with young people and their families to ensure they understand all possible outcomes when making a treatment decision,” Leibowitz continued. “These decisions should be reserved for the doctor’s office, and not with the politicians.”
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