Sex change patients getting younger, and are more likely to be women
Doctor says information age has encouraged people to seek surgery at an earlier age, and women seeking to become men are in majority
Transsexuals in Hong Kong are now seeking gender-changing surgery at a much earlier age than two decades ago, and those coming forward are more likely to be women seeking to become men.
"It seems that more and more patients are in their 20s," said Dr Albert Yuen Wai-cheung, chief of service at Ruttonjee Hospital's department of surgery and the only specialist performing sex reassignment surgery at the city's public hospitals.
"In the past, they were in their 30s. Now they are quite young, still studying," Yuen said. "With more information available, more are willing to see doctors."
Also, women undergoing sex change operations to become men now outnumber men wanting to become women.
A spokeswoman for the Hospital Authority said that between April 2010 and August 2011, seven patients - five of them women - underwent sex reassignment surgery at Ruttonjee.
Yuen said he became the city's top authority on sex reassignment surgery "by accident".
After earning his medical degree from the University of Hong Kong in 1979, Yuen won a government scholarship to study plastic and reconstructive surgery in Glasgow and returned in 1987 to Queen Mary Hospital.