Background: Increasingly more nonbinary patients are obtaining better access for gender-affirming chest surgery (top surgery), representing an important subset of patients who undergo such surgery.
Objective: We review our experience at gender-affirming chest surgery in nonbinary versus transmasculine patients in an integrated health care setting.
Methods: We performed a retrospective study of nonbinary and transmasculine patients who underwent gender-affirming chest surgery from May 1, 2012, to December 27, 2017.
Results: There were 111 nonbinary patients and 665 transmasculine patients included in the final analyses. Nonbinary patients were more likely to seek more than 1 surgical consultations than transmasculine patients (24.3% vs 1.7%, respectively, P < 0.0001). More nonbinary patients (17.3%) indicated nipple sensation to be important relative to their transmasculine counterparts (0.4%, P < 0.0001). Fewer nonbinary patients were on testosterone before surgery (33.64%) in comparison to transmasculine patients (86.14%, P < 0.0001). When only prior reduction mammaplasty or top surgery were considered, nonbinary patients (8.1%) were more likely than transmasculine patients (3.5%) to have had a prior chest surgery. When evaluating patients who did not have prior chest surgery before undergoing top surgery at our institution (n = 721), rates of major complications, minor complications, as well as revisions, were comparable between nonbinary and transmasculine patients.
Conclusions: This study demonstrated that more nonbinary patients requested nonflat chests relative to their transmasculine counterparts. Both groups in our sample displayed comparable rates of complications after top surgery.