This cross-sectional study uses validated instruments to assess long-term decisional regret and satisfaction following gender-affirming mastectomy.
The fact that they have 100% satisfaction makes me think other gender-affirming surgeries and procedures which have less than 100% satisfaction are actually suffering from inadequate development of the technology, rather than some kind of fundamental regret.
Advance the technology further and we’ll likely see all rates of regret drop to 0
So the takeaway from this is that “regret” from mastectomies isn’t 1% as often claimed in the media. It’s actually 0%:
The median Decision Regret Scale score was 0.0 (IQR, 0.0-0.0) on a 100-point scale, with lower scores noting lower levels of regret.
That isn’t what that number says. All it tells you is that at least 50% of respondents scored a zero.
FWIW, trans rights are human rights. No disagreement there. But that’s not what that number is telling you.
Moreover, they say that the media talk about 1% (or less, realistically), but here there are barely 139 respondents.
Disclaimer: Just highlighting a fact for those who fall for confirmation bias, trans rights and blah blah blah to avoid harassment.
To add to that, there might sadly be a survivor bias : some people who regretted were not able to give their opinion
That’s a good point too. Come to think of it, you could also have had missing numbers from the other direction too: people who wouldn’t have regretted it but didn’t have the opportunity to give their opinion.
The median Satisfaction With Decision Scale score was 5.0 (IQR, 5.0-5.0) on a 5-point scale, with higher scores noting higher satisfaction.
The median Decision Regret Scale score was 0.0 (IQR, 0.0-0.0) on a 100-point scale, with lower scores noting lower levels of regret.
Am I dumb or is this not saying what anyone here thinks it’s saying?
Basically, it’s not just that 50% have no regret / good satisfaction, but in fact that for this 50% there is not even a hint of dissatisfaction or regret. That’s the news. The median isn’t 4 or 1, it’s 5. So 50% of people are absolute ends of the scale.
But this abstract legit says NOTHING about the tail. So it could actually be that 20% of people have complete regret. Median without average is not that convincing in a case like this.
I tried to read the full article but I think it’s too recent to be on scihub. And like hell I’m paying for this.
