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Gender-Affirming Surgeries Have Risen, Likely Due to Better Insurance: Study

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Northern Star Girl:
  Gender-Affirming Surgeries Have Risen, Likely Due to Better Insurance: Study

                              The ADVOCATE
   https://www.advocate.com/news/gender-affirming-surgeries-rise

By: Trudy Ring
August 28 2023 9:35 AM EST

EXCERPTS Below:  (Click News Link above to view entire story)
The number of gender-affirming surgeries in the U.S. nearly tripled from 2016 to 2019, likely due to more insurers covering the procedures, with top surgery more common than genital surgery, according to a new study.

The study was published online Wednesday in the American Medical Association’s JAMA Network Open. It was conducted by faculty at the medical schools of Columbia University in New York City and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, using data from the Nationwide Ambulatory Surgery Sample and the National Inpatient Sample.

The study identified 48,019 patients who underwent gender-affirming surgery from 2016 through 2020. The authors found that the number of these surgeries rose from 4,552 in 2016 to a peak of 13,011 in 2019, then declined slightly to 12,818 in 2020.

In the period covered by the study, 27,187 patients (56.6 percent) had breast or chest surgery, 16,872 (35.1 percent) underwent genital surgery, and 6,669 (13.9 percent) had facial and other cosmetic procedures. Some patients had more than one type of surgery. “Breast and chest procedures made up the greatest percentage of the surgical interventions in younger patients while genital surgical procedures were greater in older patients,” the study noted.

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