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What Cancer Screenings do Trans People Need?
My doctor suggested a mammogram. That caused me to dig into the research.
I admit I wasn’t looking forward to doing a mammogram, so I was probably really looking for excuses not to do it. I was concerned about how I would be treated. Would I be treated as a human in such a gendered space? Would my femininity be acknowledged, or would I be humiliated? So I was looking for my excuse.
That got me thinking: what screenings do we need? I already knew some basics (I’ve heard something about hormones and breast cancer), but my curiosity took me down this rabbit hole. I was curious not just about breast cancer, and not just trans women, but all trans people. Do trans men need mammograms? How do surgeries figure into it? Does cervical cancer risk go down for people on hormones? What about prostate cancer?
I am Not a Doctor!
I’m not a doctor, so while I try to summarize guidelines and research here, ultimately you should have this conversation with your medical provider, who, unlike me, has had years of training!
Some Notes on Terminology
In presenting what I find, I’m going to use the medical words for our body parts. I understand that many in the trans community may use other words for these body parts, but in the…
