A study on the effectiveness of a multidisciplinary class for gender-affirming chest surgery in transmasculine and nonbinary patients and their support persons.

Abstract BACKGROUND At our institution, patients assigned female at birth and identify as male or non-binary who planned to undergo gender-affirming chest surgery (top surgery) were invited to attend a multi-disciplinary class. We hypothesized that patients who attended the class would have better surgical outcome. METHODS Patients who had top surgery between 10/11/2017 to 10/31/2019 were retrospectively evaluated to determine if they attended class (group one) or not (group two). Group two was stratified into patients who signed up for class but did not attend (group three) versus those who never signed up (group four). Surveys from attendees were reviewed. Patients who had top surgery utilizing methods other than double incision technique or prior chest surgery were excluded. RESULTS There were 130 patients in group one, 488 in group two, 40 in group three and 448 in group four respectively. Group one demonstrated a 16.6% decrease in the odds of having minor complications relative to group two (p=0.002). For every unit increase in BMI, there was a 7.56% increase in the odds of having a minor complication in patients who had top surgery (p=0.01). There was a 3.34% increase in the odds of having a minor complication for each year increase in age among patients who had top surgery (p=0.009). Preliminary data suggested that group three (10%) had more minor complications than group one (1.5%, p=0.0279). Majority of patients (95.9%) felt the class helped them prepare for surgery. CONCLUSION Patients who attended class demonstrated fewer minor complications than those who did not attend class although bigger cohort would be required for conclusion.