The number of people who sought gender-affirming surgeries nearly tripled in the three years before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, according to an Aug. 23 report from USA Today.
A study published Aug. 23 in JAMA Network Open examined data from over 48,000 patients who had breast and chest operations or genital reconstruction in hospitals and ASCs from 2016 to 2020. The number of patients who underwent these procedures almost tripled, from 4,552 in 2016 to 13,011 in 2019.
Young adults ages 19 to 30 received the procedures most frequently, totaling over 25,000 patients. Fewer than 8 percent of the individuals who received these procedures were ages 12 to 18, totaling 3,678 patients, according to the report.