Sexual reassignment

Sex reassignment therapy can consist of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to modify secondary sex characteristics, sex reassignment surgery to alter primary sex characteristics, and other procedures altering appearance, including permanent hair removal for trans women.

In addition to undergoing medical procedures, transsexual people who go through sex reassignment therapy usually change their social gender roles, legal names and legal sex designation. The entire process of change from one gender presentation to another is known as transition.

In appropriately evaluated cases of severe gender dysphoria, sex reassignment therapy is often the best when standards of care are followed. There is academic concern over the low quality of the evidence supporting the efficacy of sex reassignment therapy as treatment for gender dysphoria, but more robust studies are impractical to carry out; as well, there exists a broad clinical consensus, supplementing the academic research, that supports the effectiveness in terms of subjective improvement of sex reassignment therapy in appropriately selected patients. Treatment of gender dysphoria does not involve attempting to correct the patient's gender identity, but to help the patient adapt.

Major health organizations in the U.S.A. and UK have issued affirmative statements supporting sex reassignment therapy as comprising medically necessary treatments in certain appropriately evaluated cases.

In current medical practice, a diagnosis is required for sex reassignment therapy. In the International Classification of Diseases the diagnosis is known as transsexualism (). The US Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) names it gender dysphoria (in version 5). While the diagnosis is a requirement for determining medical necessity of sex reassignment therapy, some people who are validly diagnosed have no desire for all or some parts of sex reassignment therapy, particularly genital reassignment surgery, and/or are not appropriate candidates for such treatment.

...
Wikipedia