As I’ve written about before, BMI (Body Mass Index) is an unscientific concept that is often used to deny trans people life-saving surgeries. It is treated by far too many surgeons as medical fact, despite the vast body of evidence that it is wildly inaccurate, scientifically useless, and never intended by the creator to be used on an individual basis.

Recently, the only surgeon in Washington State, Geoffrey Stiller, formerly one of the few surgeons who would accept fat patients, updated his policies quietly to exclude people over the arbitrary and oft-used cutoff of 35 BMI. That means that at least two people close to me are now being denied gender affirming surgery without so much as a notification about the change. So I wanted to take the opportunity to share some scientific research recently published on the topic.

1. Recent research shows that there is no correlation between BMI and surgical complication rates in trans people in either vaginoplasty (bottom surgery) or mastectomy (top surgery)
2. “Obesity” (aka normal body variation) is very common in trans people seeking surgery (26% at Mount Sinai) and did not change despite efforts to lose weight prior to surgery
3. BMI is not an empirically based method of denying gender-affirming surgery

Trans people should not have to bear the burden of educating providers about our care but all too often we are put in that position anyway. So next time a surgeon tells you they won’t perform surgery because of “policies”, please feel free to use this research to push back on them. Even if you don’t win a single conversation, hopefully you will plant a seed and prompt them to actually read the scientific literature on the topic. I found these articles with only a cursory review of the topic and I’m not even a doctor.

Citations

1. Ives GC, Fein LA, Finch L, Sluiter EC, Lane M, Kuzon WM, Salgado CJ. Evaluation of BMI as a Risk Factor for Complications following Gender-affirming Penile Inversion Vaginoplasty. Plast Reconstr Surg Glob Open. 2019 Mar 13;7(3):e2097. doi: 10.1097/GOX.0000000000002097. PMID: 31044103; PMCID: PMC6467628.
2. Rothenberg KA, Gologorsky RC, Hojilla JC, Yokoo KM. Obesity is Not Associated with Complications or Revisions after Gender-Affirming Mastectomy in Transgender Patients. Plastic and Maxillofacial Surgery. 2019 Oct 1;229(4):sup1. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jamcollsurg.2019.08.494
3. Martinson TG, Ramachandran S, Lindner R, Reisman T, Safer JD. HIGH BODY MASS INDEX IS A SIGNIFICANT BARRIER TO GENDER-CONFIRMATION SURGERY FOR TRANSGENDER AND GENDER-NONBINARY INDIVIDUALS. Endocr Pract. 2020 Jan;26(1):6-15. doi: 10.4158/EP-2019-0345. Epub 2019 Aug 28. PMID: 31461357.
4. Lisa M. Brownstone, Jaclyn DeRieux, Devin A. Kelly, Lanie J. Sumlin, and Jennifer L. Gaudiani. Transgender Health. ahead of printhttp://doi.org/10.1089/trgh.2020.0068