Endocrine Abstracts

Treatment of gender dysphoric individuals, has in medicine nearly always met with a great deal of skepticism. In recent years, changes in the clinical management of adolescents have been made by clinicians in Europe and North America. In their clinics, puberty is suppressed in an early pubertal stage and/or at certain ages. The clinicians have come to this decision for various reasons: 1) the adverse effects of a relatively late treatment start on the adolescents’ psychological functioning, and on their social their intellectual development; 2) the unsatisfactory physical results of late treatment and 3) the unfavourable post-operative outcome, in terms of psychological functioning and quality of life, related to a late rather than an early start of treatment. Pubertal suppression allows adolescents to make the decision to start cross-sex hormone treatment under less stressful conditions than when they have to do so, while fully aware of and distressed by their unwanted physical masculinization or feminisation. Concerns, however also exist regarding the ability of adolescents to decide on pubertal suppression and the safety of this intervention. We will discuss both psychological pros and cons of pubertal suppression.