RESEARCH

The Research and Development Department at FACIALTEAM is a pioneer worldwide in the field of Facial Gender Confirmation Surgery, laying the foundations in the transgender health discipline. It is the company’s driving force behind the development of new complementary treatments and improvements in facial feminization surgical techniques and approaches, part of our continuous effort to offer our patients the very best service. The goals of the R&D Department are:

• To develop less invasive surgical approaches
• To establish protocols for facial feminization surgical procedures
• To create new diagnostic support tools
• To implement complementary treatments for facial feminization techniques (associated aesthetic procedures, MICROFEMINIZATION®)
• To develop new techniques to improve the postoperative experience
• To develop and implement prospective outcome studies for FFS and FGCS
• To organize training and teaching events to ensure the efficient dissemination of modern FFS and FGCS concepts

At this time, the R&D Department has a staff of three, and its budget has doubled since it was created in 2015. Heading the Department is Dr. Fermín Capitán Cañadas, Doctor in Biomedicine. Dr. Anabel Sánchez García, also Doctor in Biomedicine, is FACIALTEAM’s scientific adviser and writer. Caroline Sumner, the media archivist, is the most recent addition to the team. Her invaluable work includes cataloguing an image database comprising more than 30,000 images. This documentary collection, which is made up of preoperative, surgical, postoperative, radiological and CT scan images from FFS patients, is one of the largest photographic collections devoted exclusively to transgender patients in the world.

The team collaborates closely with national and international universities and centers with the goal of sharing know-how and experience and, as a result, obtaining innovative quality tools that can be applied to our treatments and, thus, improve the quality of life for our patients.

The TransHealth Initiative is a knowlege project with roots in the 2014 WPATH symposium in Bangkok where Dr. Simon met many other surgeons dedicated to the field of transgender confirmation surgery, such as Dr. Marci Bowers, Dr. Preecha of PAI and Dr. Kim of the Yeson Voice Center. Dozens of collaborations have come out of those initial meetings, all with the aim to expand and strengthen expertise in the field of gender affirming surgery. The first workshop in Marbella on Piezo-surgery, which is ultrasonic technology for craneofacial procedures that minimize trauma to surrounding tissues, involved a group of 15 participants who were able to observe use of the instruments in live surgeries as well as hours of hands-on practice in a controlled laboratory exercise on bone fragments. The team from the Okayama Gender Clinic, lead by Dr. Yuzaburo of Japan, also presented during this encounter on the GCS techniques and cases in Japan. The second workshop with Dr. Marci Bowers, a well-known GCS surgeon from the USA, was opened to local professionals in Spain: The exclusive group of 20 attendees included representation from the Public Health service´s Gender Unit in Málaga, the hospital´s Urology department, the regional transgender association (ATA), the psychologist of an association for transgender children (FUNDACIÓN DANIELA), a PhD academic interested in the transgender theme in art, a transgender author in tourism, and the group of professional nurses and therapists of FACIALTEAM. Dr. Bowers now also forms part of FACIALTEAM´s 3-tiered Australian congress on three facets of transgender surgery: GRS, facial gender confirming surgery and voice surgery. Other TransHealth Initiative activities have included sensitivity trainings with Hospital staff in Marbella and many observerships of facial feminization surgery, most notably by the public Gender Units of Sweden and Holland, as well as private institutions such as the Johns Hopkins University, Philadelphia Center of Transgender Surgery and the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in the United States of America.

The TransHealth Initiative forms part of FACIALTEAM´s research & development department with the objective of innovation and global standardization of facial feminization surgery.