EXCLUSIVE — Doctors called on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to update medical codes to include side effects suffered by detransitioners.
Dr. Kurt Miceli, medical director for the advocacy group Do No Harm, presented at the CDC’s twice-yearly conference to update U.S. medical codes to include side effects for detransitioners, or those who no longer identify as transgender.
Miceli and his team at Do No Harm, which stands against gender transition medicine for minors, put together a presentation for the panel that oversees the ICD-10-CM, the official diagnostic coding system that standardizes medical treatment and insurance information in the United States.
Currently, the ICD-10 only includes a code for “personal history of sex reassessment,” which Miceli said does a disservice to those who not only detransitioned but also suffered complications from various processes associated with gender transition medicine.
Miceli told the Washington Examiner in an exclusive interview following his presentation on Wednesday that this is the first time the CDC has considered including codes specifically for detransitioners.
“We’re fortunate that in this time frame we were able to sort of move it through the bureaucracy, so to speak, and, you know, delighted to have the opportunity to present,” Miceli said.
Detransitioners, particularly those who underwent medical transition as minors and detransitioned in adulthood, have played a significant role in advocacy against medical systems providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgical interventions for youth with gender dysphoria.
Partly due to years of advocacy from detransitioners such as Chloe Cole, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Day One of his presidency to make binary biological sex, as opposed to gender identity, the only classification system permissible in federally funded projects.
The executive order’s effects have spread throughout the federal government, including changes implemented by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Representing detransitioners in the medical system
Miceli’s proposal included a specific category for detransitioners and those who no longer identify as the opposite sex.
During his CDC presentation, he cited that upward of 80% of children who identify as transgender will ultimately desist, or stop identifying with the opposite sex, in early adulthood. However, he noted that getting data for this metric is virtually impossible without proper medical codes.
“We need to move past the erroneous narrative that those with desistance and detransition do not exist. Currently, their clinical status remains invisible to medicine’s classification system,” Miceli said. “Our proposal aims to support the collection of valuable health information for research.”
Miceli’s proposal also included diagnostic codes for social, medical, and surgical transition, all of which have their own complications.
For example, chest-binding is something that is often part of a female’s social transition to identify as male, but it can have side effects such as shortness of breath, increased risk for respiratory infections, and breast tissue atrophy.
More aggressive surgical interventions, such as phalloplasty or vaginoplasty, can have significant complications for the urinary tract as well as special wound care needs.
Miceli told the Washington Examiner that he thinks the need for the diagnostic codes is “relatively straightforward.”
“I think it’s just obviously so important to recognize the detransition, the desistance that exists, and then really allow the ability for clinicians to document such appropriately in notes, but also then to really do real-world research based on what that data is,” Miceli said.
HHS’s role in updating the ICD-10
The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics is responsible for maintaining the ICD-10, which consists of more than 70,000 individual medical codes for specific conditions on which healthcare professionals and insurance companies rely.
Miceli said he and his team submitted their proposal in June and worked with CDC staff to get it on the schedule for the meeting on Sept. 9 and 10.
After the public proposal meeting, there will be a 60-day comment period for members of the public, following the Federal Register’s standard protocol. The CDC must then respond to all of these public comments.
Miceli said HHS will ultimately review the proposed changes to the ICD-10. If the changes are approved, they will be integrated into the version of the ICD-10 published in October 2026.
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When asked if he was optimistic that Kennedy’s HHS would approve the codes, Miceli said he hopes to get the support of both HHS leadership and the CDC’s rank-and-file staff.
“We know that from the Trump administration perspective, that understanding the concerns of detransitioners, the regret, the stress, the pain that they’ve gone through, is really important, and we’re certainly delighted to see that,” Miceli said. “And I think our desire to really support those who have detransitioned is very much aligned with those goals. These codes are absolutely critical to doing that.”
