Archives of Sexual Behavior ( IF 2.9 ) Pub Date : 2024-10-23 , DOI: 10.1007/s10508-024-03021-1 Rachel L. Walden, Jasmine Abdulcadir, Brian D. Earp
Labial hypertrophy, which lacks an accepted definition, is generally understood to refer to morphological and aesthetic characteristics of the labia believed to deviate from a perceived norm. Such ostensive deviation has the potential to affect many domains of a person’s well-being, as does its surgical treatment, labiaplasty. Nearly 24,000 labiaplasty procedures were performed in the United States in 2022, representing a greater than three-fold increase since numbers were first reported in 2013. Nearly 20% of these procedures were performed on minors, and cases have been reported in children well before complete pubertal development or the age of personal consent. In this article, we explore the indications that are used to designate labiaplasty as “medically necessary” in minors, a status that, we argue, is required for such procedures to avoid fitting the definition of “medicalized FGM” (i.e., “female genital mutilation”) according to the World Health Organization. As a part of this, we consider the particular ways in which outcomes are measured in this population. We shed light on persistent methodological shortcomings in the research on labiaplasty, discuss ethical and legal implications, and make recommendations to improve the relevance, reliability, and generalizability of future investigations into this increasingly common, controversial surgical procedure.
中文翻译:
未成年人阴唇整形术:将切割医学化?
阴唇肥大缺乏公认的定义,通常被理解为指被认为偏离感知规范的阴唇的形态和美学特征。这种表面上的偏差有可能影响一个人健康的许多领域,其手术治疗阴唇整形术也是如此。2022 年,美国进行了近 24,000 例阴唇整形手术,自 2013 年首次报告数字以来增长了三倍多。这些手术中有近 20% 是在未成年人身上进行的,据报道,儿童早在青春期完全发育或达到个人同意年龄之前就发生了病例。在本文中,我们探讨了用于将未成年人阴唇整形术指定为“医学上必要”的适应症,我们认为,这种状态是此类手术的必要条件,以避免符合世界卫生组织对“医学化 FGM”(即“女性生殖器切割”)的定义。作为其中的一部分,我们考虑了在该人群中测量结果的特定方式。我们阐明了阴唇整形术研究中持续存在的方法学缺陷,讨论了伦理和法律影响,并提出了建议,以提高未来对这种日益普遍、有争议的外科手术的调查的相关性、可靠性和普遍性。