Surgical timing and complications, with body image, quality of life, sexual function and genital sensation in patients with congenital adrenal hyperplasia

From Harmful Practices and Instrumentalisation, towards Legislative Protections and Community-Owned Healthcare Services: The Context and Goals of the Intersex Movement in Australia

“…Clinical research has, for example, compared people with intersex variations against the experiences of children with a serious bowel disorder to assert that early feminising and masculinising surgeries are justified on children on the basis of satisfactory outcomes, despite lower likelihoods of experiences of orgasm and greater frequencies of pain during intercourse, and despite significant levels of distress in the population (Warne et al 2005;Schützmann et al 2009). Clinicians in a Victorian hospital have reported more recently on findings from studies of their own patients subjected to feminising surgeries in infancy for congenital adrenal hyperplasia; despite low response rates, reports detail outcomes of postsurgical clitoral sensitivity testing ("vibration" tests) in participating adolescents and adults, respondents' views, and (reported separately) increased probabilities of incontinence and other urinary issues (Bogdanska et al 2015;Villegas et al 2015;Bogdanska et al 2018;Preston et al 2024). Early masculinising surgeries at the same institution lack long-term follow up, with limited clinical research examining outcomes in adolescent boys, who are too young to establish long-term outcomes (Carpenter 2022;.…”