RE: RE: Kidney Transplantation in Transgender Patients

Excerpt

It is important that healthcare professionals are aware of the unique considerations and challenges of kidney transplantation in transgender patients, as both kidney transplantation and gender affirmation treatments are becoming more prevalent. We understand that there is no consensus on many of the topics discussed in our review and encourage discussion regarding the data and recommendations from our review. Despite advances in transgender healthcare since the early 2000s, this patient population still has a high prevalence of psychiatric and medical comorbidities. A recent systematic review from 2016¹ highlights the prevalence of depression as high as 64.2% in a study of 573 patients [1] and 63.0% in a study of 230 patients [2]. These studies utilized the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CESD) as their assessment instrument [1, 2]. Despite a uniform assessment for depression, transgender studies are limited by heterogenous transgender populations and timeframes [3]. While the reply authors note that lower estimates of transgender depression exist, they are wrong to assert that high estimates have not been found in large contemporary cohorts. …