Hi Megan,I don't have a girl with CAH, so surgery does not affect us personally, but it's still an interesting topic to me. One thing I've thought more and more is that it is really a gross over-generalization to refer to genital surgery as "THE surgery." Point being, there isn't just ONE surgery...one really has to distinguish between clitoroplasty, vaginoplasty, and labioplasty, each of which addresses a different physiological "problem."
NOt only that... there are a number of techniques that can be used for each of these different procedures. For example, I have read of at least five different types of vaginoplasties...so probably, there are many more. Each involves a different technique and has a different success rate, as demonstrated in the abstract above.
As you know, the topic of surgery often involves heated debate. Sometimes I think that dissension occurs because people are really talking about very different things, when they are arguing. E.g. One person saying "surgery" could be thinking "clitorectomy" while another saying "surgery" coud really be referring to a "cut back vaginoplasty"....though they are two vastly different things! Maybe discussions would be more fruitful and there would be less dissension if we all knew we were talking about the same thing, in the first place!
