Almost 3,500 women sent for ‘sex-swap’ mastectomies on NHS in three years

Thousands of gender-confused young women have been referred for mastectomies on the NHS, it has been reported.

According to The Daily Telegraph, Freedom of Information requests reveal that 3,490 women were approved for “masculinising chest surgery” between 2021 and 2023, with a slight rise each year. In addition, more than 780 women were referred for “masculinising genital gender reassignment surgery” over three years.

Approximately 80 per cent of women who use the NHS’s Gender Dysphoria National Referral Support Services are between 17 and 25 years old.

‘Devastation’

A spokesman from Bayswater Support Group, an organisation supporting families with gender-confused children, said: “There is a particular cruelty for parents in finding that taxpayers are funding mastectomies on thousands of women who have been misled into believing this will be the answer to their psychological distress.

“The devastation of seeing your daughter harmed in this way is impossible to describe.”

An NHS spokesman stated: “Masculinising chest surgery is only available to adult patients who have a clinical diagnosis of gender dysphoria from a specialist NHS clinic.

“The NHS is undertaking a wide-ranging review of adult gender services, which will inform a revised service specification to set out how we will support patients with gender dysphoria in future.”

Biology

NHS England has also agreed to review how it uses terms such as ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, after the Office for Statistics Regulation said it should provide “clearer guidance and definitions” in staff surveys.

In a letter seen by The Daily Telegraph, Ed Humpherson, who is Head of the regulator, warned that “a lack of clarity could result in the distinct concepts of sex and gender identity being conflated”.

In one survey, staff were asked if the NHS acted “fairly with regard to career progression/promotion”, regardless of ‘gender’, while another question asked about ‘sexual’ harassment.

Employee network SEEN in Health raised concerns that such conflation could cause confusion and fail to accurately represent the “progress made to reduce sexual harassment towards women”.

‘Safety risk’

Last month, it was reported that the number of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria had increased fiftyfold over the ten years to 2021.

A study using GP records in England, published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, found that in 2011, one in 60,000 children were diagnosed with gender dysphoria, increasing to one in 1,200 by 2021.

Over half of the children diagnosed were also recorded as having anxiety, depression or a history of self-harm. The authors called for better mental health treatment for gender-confused young people.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting stressed: “Children’s healthcare must always be evidence-led. The independent expert Commission on Human Medicines found that the current prescribing and care pathway for gender dysphoria and incongruence presents an unacceptable safety risk for children and young people.”