Mastectomies are on the rise among National Health Service (NHS) England patients. Figures show that NHS England has spent more than $6 million on mastectomies over just this past year. Meanwhile, it is estimated that around $21 million in NHS funds have been spent on both mastectomies and genital surgeries.
The numbers were taken from freedom of information requests. In 2022-2023, 1,115 trans mastectomies were done, which is a 52% increase since the 2024-2025 period when 734 such surgeries were done. In the 2023-2024 period, 904 were done, and within the 2025-2026 period, 933 people had gotten a mastectomy through NHS England. According to NHS estimates, a single mastectomy operation costs $5,800, which means taxpayers are paying up to $6.5 million a year, collectively.
Helen Joyce, director of advocacy for the charity Sex Matters, warns, “Given that we know the vast majority of elective mastectomies relating to gender identity are performed on girls who haven’t reached the crucial age of brain maturity at 25, the sharp rise in the number of these surgeries in recent years is a tragedy.”
“These girls are at the peak age of being influenced by cultural and social activism, and often cannot grasp the regret that they may later feel. We know of detransitioners who have become mothers and grieve that they cannot breastfeed their babies.”
Masculinizing genital surgeries have also increased since the 2022-2023 period. In that time, 270 surgeries were documented, compared to 322 in 2025-2026. NHS figures show that such surgeries cost an average of $32,000.
“The persistently high rates of genital surgeries are even more grim,” Joyce said, adding, “These operations destroy healthy function and create a host of miserable complications, including a high likelihood of chronic pain, repeated infection and incontinence as well as sterility. Young trans-identifying people often have wildly unrealistic expectations of what surgery can achieve, and by the time they realize this it is too late.”
Most patients receiving these surgeries are between 18 and 25, and many have autism or face mental health problems, according to an official review of adult gender clinics.
“The NHS should not be providing treatment that does no good and a great deal of harm. It’s only a matter of time before these surgeries are looked back on with the same sort of horror as lobotomies,” Joyce expressed.
A Bayswater Support Group spokesman criticized NHS England, saying it has shown “no accountability or recognition that an entire cohort of young and vulnerable adults are being exposed to life-changing medical and surgical harms.”
“It’s hard to believe any other area of medicine would routinely submit young adults to such a brutal pathway to treat a condition of the mind, with no robust evidence of benefit and no follow-up, let alone expand such a service once these problems were exposed,” the spokesman said.
Fifteen years ago, more biological men were referred to gender identity services, but the number has since reversed. More biological women are now being referred to gender identity services than men, research shows. Since 2017, about 70% of referrals have been for biological females, most of whom were teenagers, the Gender Identity Development Service found.
