The history of vaginoplasty: Technical and sociological advances

Technical advances in gender-affirming genital surgery have allowed the modern surgeon to create a vagina, vulva and clitoris from a male sex. This surgery, commonly known as vaginoplasty, should in fact be identified as aidopoiesis, since it is not a question of improving an already existing vagina but of creating a female sex. Numerous technical advances made since 1930 throughout the world now offer a safe and proven surgical strategy for female genital gender affirmation. Most of these techniques are derived from advances in intersex genital surgery. The first vaginoplasties described in the context of gender affirmation were performed in Berlin in the 1930s. After the Second World War, the greatest advances in vaginoplasty were made in Denmark. It was not until Geroges Burou in Casablanca and Harold Gillies, aided by Ralph Millard in England, in the mid-fifties that the modern technique of invagination of the penile skin took over from neo-vaginal grafting techniques. The creation of the clitoris from the glans penis and a more aesthetic vulva were the major advances from the 1970s. Other flap or intestinal transplant techniques were also developed, often to correct the failure of penile skin invagina-tion. Some of the patients who benefited from these early technical advances, such as Lili Elbe and Christine Jorgensen later on, helped to make this surgery, which had long remained taboo, popular with the general public. Pioneers such as the gynaecologist Georges Burou in Casablanca have contributed, with the greatest discretion, to the well-being of gender-affirmed people by improving these techniques. Today, this hard-won heritage cannot be ignored by surgeons interested in vaginoplasty. (c) c 2023 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.