36% of patients at Amsterdam gender clinic were lost to follow up.

In a study of all patients at a clinic treating 95% of all trans-identified people in the Netherlands¹, 36% of all patients were lost to follow up. This may make reported rates of regret or detransition highly unreliable². Rates of “regret” in the study itself may be compromised by a definition of “true regret” marked by beginning hormone therapy reflecting the patient’s sex (e.g. testosterone therapy for detransitioning “trans women” or estrogen therapy for detransitioning “trans men.”) The study also notes that some of those experiencing “true regret” had thought that transition would be a “solution” for their homosexuality. Regret was expressed between 46 and 271 months after beginning cross-sex hormone treatment. This may suggest there is a long tail of such regret still to come, even from those who began treatment more than twenty years ago.

1.  Wiepjes CM, Nota NM, de Blok CJM, Klaver M, de Vries ALC, Wensing-Kruger SA, de Jongh RT, Bouman MB, Steensma TD, Cohen-Kettenis P, Gooren LJG, Kreukels BPC, den Heijer M. The Amsterdam Cohort of Gender Dysphoria Study (1972-2015): Trends in Prevalence, Treatment, and Regrets. J Sex Med. 2018 Apr;15(4):582-590. doi: 10.1016/j.jsxm.2018.01.016. Epub 2018 Feb 17. PMID: 29463477 ↩︎
2. https://catalogofbias.org/biases/attrition-bias/ ↩︎