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The Health Burden of Transfeminine Facial Gender Dysphoria: An Analysis of Public Perception. Facial plastic surgery & aesthetic medicine Nuyen, B., Kandathil, C., McDonald, D., Chou, D. W., Shih, C., Most, S. P. 2020

Abstract

Objectives/Hypothesis: The face is a major communicator of gender identity. Transfeminine individuals report debilitating quality-of-life deficits as a result of their gender dysphoria, which may be addressed with feminizing therapies. We aimed to quantify the potential impact of facial gender dysphoria experienced by transfeminine patients, as well as associated treatments, including feminizing facial gender surgery, through validated health state utility measures. Methods: A transfeminine patient volunteer who underwent head and neck gender-affirming treatments was consented for research use of perioperative photographs. These media aided in the description of two transfeminine health states, pre- and postfacial feminization facial gender dysphoria. Monocular blindness and binocular blindness were two health state controls. General population adults rated these four health states through visual analog scale (VAS), standard gamble (SG), and time trade-off (TTO), which were used to calculate the quality-adjusted life years (QALYs). Results: Survey respondents totaled 206 with a mean (standard deviation [SD]) age of 35.8 (11.9) years. Mean (SD) health utility measures included 0.75 (0.22) QALYs for VAS, 0.82 (0.19) QALYS for SG, 0.79 (0.21) QALYS for TTO for pretreatment facial gender dysphoria, and 0.81 (0.21), 0.86 (0.19), 0.83 (0.20) QALYS for postgender-affirming treatments for facial gender dysphoria. The health utility scores for the postgender-affirming treatments for facial gender dysphoria (+0.06 VAS, p=0.005) were significantly improved compared with the pretreatment state. Conclusions: To our knowledge, this study is the first to examine how the general population perceives the health burden of facial gender dysphoria experienced by transfeminine patients. Facial gender dysphoria is perceived to have a negative impact on health states, not dissimilar to monocular blindness in our sample. Feminizing facial gender surgery appears to significantly increase health utility measures.

View details for DOI 10.1089/fpsam.2020.0192

View details for PubMedID 33054404