Sex reassignment surgery (SRS), gender reassignment surgery, or sex-change operation is a term for the surgical procedures by which a person's physical appearance and function of their existing sexual characteristics are altered to resemble that of the other sex. It is part of a treatment for gender identity disorder in transsexual and transgender people. It may also be performed on intersex people, often in infancy. Other terms for SRS include gender reassignment surgery, sex reconstruction surgery, genital reconstruction surgery, gender confirmation surgery, and more recently sex affirmation surgery. The commonly used terms sex change or sex change operation are considered factually inaccurate. The terms feminizing genitoplasty and masculinizing genitoplasty are used medically.
The best known of these surgeries are those that reshape the genitals, which are also known as genital reassignment surgery or genital reconstruction surgery (GRS).
The meaning of sex reassignment surgery usually differs for transwomen (male to female) rather than transmen (female to male). For transwomen, sex reassignment usually involves the surgical construction of a vagina, whereas in the case of transmen, this term may entail any of a variety of procedures, from the mastectomy (removal of the female breasts) to the shaping of a male-contoured chest to the construction of a penis. Additionally, transmen usually undergo a hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy.
Chest (or "top") surgery is often the only surgical procedure female-to-male transsexuals choose to undergo, as GRS techniques for transmen are still rather unrefined and typically produce genitalia of compromised aesthetic and functional quality.
For some transwomen, facial feminization surgery and breast augmentation are also important parts of the sex reassignment process.