Masculinizing and defeminizing gender-affirming surgery.

Abstract

Transmasculine transgender and gender-diverse individuals may request gender-affirming surgery, standalone or in addition to other interventions. The choices and preferred outcomes of surgery can be highly individual. Besides surgeons' technical skills and patient physique, professionals in this field should be able to cooperate with other disciplines and with patients. The most requested surgery is masculinizing chest surgery, aiming to create a masculine chest with minimal scarring. For genital surgery, metoidioplasty refers to the procedure where the hypertrophic clitoris is released and possibly a scrotum is created from local labia flaps, whereas phalloplasty refers to a procedure in which a neophallus is created from a flap. Possible other surgeries include hysterectomy/oophorectomy, colpectomy, and the implants of scrotal or erection prostheses. In order to guide patients and clinicians, standardized outcome measures as well as evidence-based decision aids have been developed. Such aids, in combination with collaborative medical and psychosocial care, may further leverage the long-term outcomes of these surgeries.