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SEXUAL MEDICINE

Improving care for transgender and non-binary individuals

Nature Reviews Urology volume 19, page 328 (2022)Cite this article

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Improving the care of transgender and non-binary (TGNB) individuals is urgently required; to this end, two articles in The Journal of Sexual Medicine describe and discuss issues concerning the sexual care of people in this community.

Whitney and colleagues describe the urgent need for the creation of tools designed to specifically assess sexual function in TGNB individuals, which are currently lacking. The authors detail how sexual function in TGNB individuals has not yet been systematically defined, which hinders its assessment in these individuals. They also describe how multiple factors are crucial to understanding sexual dysfunction in TGNB individuals. They postulate that, although modification of currently used cisgender sexual function assessment tools would be easier than developing new ones (as has been previously proposed) doing so would be inappropriate and inadequate owing to limitations and biases that could be introduced. They state that, in order to truly assess sexual function in TGNB people, factors including social and cultural circumstances, stage of transition, mental health, gender dysphoria and social determinants of health should be taken into account, and the fluidity of sexuality and gender identity needs to be allowed for. The authors acknowledge that creating a properly validated tool to assess sexual function in TGNB individuals might take several attempts; however, they add that this tool has the potential to considerably influence the field of sexual medicine and positively affect relationships between the LGBTQ+ population and health-care providers. The authors conclude by stating that the TGNB community deserves optimized care that requires the definition of sexual function to be specifically developed.

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  1. Nature Reviews Urology http://www.nature.com/nrurol/

    Louise Stone

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  1. Louise Stone
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Correspondence to Louise Stone.

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Stone, L. Improving care for transgender and non-binary individuals. Nat Rev Urol 19, 328 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41585-022-00610-4

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