Quality of Life, Suicidal Attempt and Satisfaction in Gender Dysphoria Individuals Undergone Sex Reassignment Surgery

Abstract

Introduction: Gender dysphoria (GD) refers to a condition that a person suffers from incongruence between anatomical appearance and gender identity. The GDs have high prevalence of psychiatric comorbidities whole the life, while sex reassignment surgery (SRS) is an effective procedure on them.

Methods: A cross-sectional study 44 GD individuals who were underwent at least one sex reassignment surgery were evaluated during 8-months period from May 2019 to December 2019. Quality of life (QoL) with the SF-36 questionnaire was measured and the rate of satisfaction and suicidal attempts was attained.

Results: Forty-four GDs participated in this study, including 10 (22.7%) transwomen and 34 (77.3%) transmen. Total mean score of QoL is 79.30 (±14.72) with no difference between transmen (78.76 ±15.11) and transwomen (81.11 ± 13.90) (p=0.730). Three (30%) of transwomen and 12 (35.3%) of transmen had history of suicidal attempts before SRS and no suicidal attempt was declared after SRS. After surgery, all patients were 100% satisfied that they had changed their gender. The average satisfaction with the quality of surgery was 91 ± 8.76 among transwomen and 82.79 ± 22.40 among transmen. After SRS, all of the individuals had experienced orgasm. Generally, 39 people (88.6%) had normal sexual desire and 5 people (11.4%) had low sexual desire after surgery.

Conclusions: Overall, SRS has positive effect on GD individuals. It helps GDs to have good QoL and high rate of satisfaction and reduction in suicidal attempts.