Thread by @ErinInTheMorn

@benryanwriter This is a conference poster presentation, not a study. We don’t know much about their data, how the selection criteria worked and the challenges in it, limitations, information on pre-surgical suicidality beyond a couple years, control variables, no causal inference can be made.

@benryanwriter There are a million non-surgery reasons why the data could have nothing to do with the surgery itself, such as financial difficulty following surgery, job loss, health insurance denials, mistreatment and discrimination on follow up, patients with prior psych issues showing up

@benryanwriter Small numbers/rare event issues with data, temporary increase in MHIs during the first 6 months, coding issues around suicide attempts and completion, bias in the dataset, which surgeon made up most of the data and were their results poorer than usual, etc

@benryanwriter Basically, as I’m sure you know and I’m sure you’ve seen even Leor Sapir mention - the MP is not able to support any conclusions that vaginoplasty yields negative outcomes given actual full studies that have shown the opposite in years following the data period of 2011-2018.

@benryanwriter Given that it is a poster presentation and not a full study there is also very little we can substantively critique because again, it does not follow the standards of a full journal article, it’s just a MP.

@benryanwriter And in fact, from another study looking specifically at AUA MPs, they judge that half never even make it to peer reviewed journals. This one has not.