"Obesity Persists As Surgery Barrier Among Transgender Adults" - Regina Schaffer
More than a quarter of transgender or gender-nonbinary adults presented with obesity when seeking gender-confirmation surgery, and those considered ineligible due to high BMI were unable to lose weight to qualify for the procedures, according to researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “When we get to the point where we are taking care of transgender people in the way that we should be — beyond the current lack of trained transgender care providers and the lack of insurance coverage for transgender people — it will still be the case that there are barriers to care, which we will have to identify and overcome,” said Joshua Safer, MD, executive director of Mount Sinai’s Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery. He added, “Among these is overweight and obesity among those patients seeking gender-confirmation surgery. Simply expecting people to be motivated enough to be able to lose that significant weight — we’re talking about people with a very high BMI — is not realistic.”
— Joshua Safer, MD, Executive Director, Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Mount Sinai, Professor, Medicine, Endocrinology, Diabetes and Bone Disease, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
