Quality Of Life scores start to decline around one year after “gender-affirming” surgery. After five years, these scores are below pre-surgery levels.

A systematic review and meta-analysis¹ of studies on the Quality Of Life (QoL) of transgender patients showed that in every domain, these patients tended to have poor QoL compared to the general population. Some patients showed an increase in QoL in some domains, but this peaked after about a year. After five years, these scores were below pre-transition levels.

1. Nobili, A., Glazebrook, C. & Arcelus, J. Quality of life of treatment-seeking transgender adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Rev Endocr Metab Disord 19, 199–220 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11154-018-9459-y ↩︎