Surgeon News

There are now at least 30 academic medical centers in the U.S. that have a transgender surgery program, signalling a growing trend that is improving access to care and filling an important gap in medical education.

Despite the dissolution of two transgender surgery programs in Miami earlier in 2019, transgender and non-binary Floridians now have newly improved access to transgender surgical care through Restore Med Center.

Despite the chaos created by the pending closure of financially beleaguered Hahnemann University Hospital, its demise will clear the way for a new multidisciplinary gender care center to open in Philadelphia, and Hahnemann’s Transgender Surgery Program and Transgender Fellowship Training Program — among the first of its kind in the United States — will live on in a new home.

It’s that time of year again: transgender and non-binary folks and allies are making their way this week to Philadelphia for the Philadelphia Trans Wellness Conference (PTWC), being held July 25-27, 2019. Now in its 18th year, PTWC is the largest free trans conference in the world, drawing over 10,000 attendees in 2018, an increase of more than 40% compared to the previous year. At this year’s PTWC, attendees will have the chance to hear from many surgeons who have dedicated their careers to transgender surgery. Here’s a rundown of the surgeon-led sessions.

The first ever SRC accredited Center of Excellence in Gender Confirmation Surgery has been established at Greenbrae Surgery Center in Greenbrae, California. More than just a name, the Center of Excellence accreditation is only achieved by facilities and surgeons that meet nationally recognized standards for quality care and safety as determined by an independent, external process of evaluation. For patients, this means working with experienced surgeons who perform gender confirmation procedures exclusively, as well as staff that is specially trained to care for transgender patients, and a facility where a large volume of gender confirmation surgeries are performed according to the highest standards.

After serving transgender patients in the Bay Area for over 14 years, Dr. Joel Beck is relocating his practice to Charlotte, North Carolina. The board-certified plastic surgeon will continue to offer surgical care at the Foster City office for the next year, but is also doing Skype consultations for patients on the East Coast now in advance of opening the new Charlotte practice in October. The new location is in Matthews, a town of Charlotte located in southeastern Mecklenburg County, a half hour drive from downtown Charlotte.

From coast to coast, there’s been a big boom in the development of transgender surgery programs in the United States in recent years. The growing demand for gender affirming surgeries, greater access to funding and the increasing number of surgeons offering these procedures are all attributing factors. Given that these conditions can also be met in Washington state, could this mean that Seattle is primed to become the next transgender surgery hub in the country?