TransitionQuestions

Well, all surgeries carry a certain degree of risk that can't be eliminated. But I assume you aren't asking about stuff like bleeds and infections. If you are, lemme know and I'll cover those.

You specified two (sort of), so let's address those and go from there. The usual warning applies here; this is medical stuff, which can bother people regardless of it being a trans related question. And, definitely just collapse the comment if discussion of the necessity of surgical intervention for gender confirmation is upsetting at all.

Vaginoplasty is a fairly complicated procedure, since there's a lot of tissue being altered any time that happens, you've got to worry about the tissues dying instead of healing. While not common, it does happen. There's ways to mitigate it, and reduce the chances of it happening, but the risk is never zero. Necrosis is something that can be life threatening by itself. Coupled with an infection, you've stepped into high risk complications territory.

When not life threatening, necrosis does still have unpleasant consequences. Tissue death means tissue loss, and that means a poor outcome, worse scarring, and a longer recovery with the possibility of needing multiple corrective surgeries

Again, necrosis isn't very common now because surgical procedures have gotten well understood and practiced.

Secondary to that is the recovery factor. Even when surgery is perfect, no matter what the surgeon does, you can't get past the body's own limitations. Scarring is going to happen. It can, and usually will, be so minor as to be a non issue, but it can be bad enough to possibly result in a non functional result, or even a result that is painful in day to day activities. This risk is fairly low probability, and chances are that if it's a higher individual risk, you'll already know. We tend to pick up random injuries in life, and how those scar up is a decent enough indicator of how you'll scar post-surgery.

Beyond that, you get into really, really unlikely things like a failure to heal. I've only heard of that happening in Vaginoplasty, with no cases that I've read about or personally seen having it happen. It's exceedingly rare in any surgery at all, and would be the result of some weird, undetected underlying cause, not a direct result of the surgery itself.

Now, having played helper monkey for folks post vaginoplasty (even once with a cis woman, though the details of that aren't relevant), a lot of how well things heal comes down to following post-op instructions, just like any surgery. But you've got a lot of delicate tissues involved, so you have to be sure to completely follow those instructions because you can damage things by not doing so.

Ffs though, that's more complicated. That isn't a single type of surgery, and things like bone removal are going to be riskier than skin level stuff.

A tracheal shave is a fairly popular choice, and it is no riskier in terms of threat to life than most surgeries. The two big risks are permanent changes to the voice, which could include losing the ability to speak at all (I've never heard of it happening since it became a more common procedure though, and it was rare to begin with) or an impingment to the airway.

The unwanted deepening of the voice, or making the voice irregular does happen. Not often, but I've personally known one person that was left with a definite gravelly effect.

Airway issues are as close to zero risk as it gets nowadays. There's records of it happening, but a half decent surgeon isn't going to mess up like that, and it is usually from an inexperienced surgeon rather than the body responding poorly.

Brow reduction tends to be a little more prone to complications. When you're altering bone, as with the brow being essentially sanded down, there's always a risk of the bone healing poorly. You can go too deep and end up with bad problems, including infections of the bone right near the brain, which can be life threatening. Rare, but still non zero.

If they have to cut out bone, the risks of damage to nerves of the face goes up, but it's a risk in any brow reduction. This can result in temporary or permanent paralysis of part of the face.

The scariest, but least common, risk is where the bone not only doesn't heal right, but actually ends up being broken down by the body. I've never met anyone that's personally seen it happen, and back when I was reading up on all this stuff originally, I couldn't find any occurrences since the early nineties that were published. It is mostly down to the surgeon having good imaging to work from, and the skill to use that to plan how much material is removed.

Rhinoplasty is such a common procedure across the board that it really only carries the standard surgical risks as long as you verify the surgeon's credentials.

Some people opt to go with fillers and/or implants to reshape the face rather than removing anything. The risks there are the same as anywhere else on the body, and aren't specific to FFS, so I won't waste screen space covering those; it's going to be better formatted on a clinic's website than I can manage here anyway.

This is hitting wall of text length as it is, so I'll sum up.

Generally, it's the risks of any surgery that are the main concern, not really the procedure specific ones at this point. If you're going to an established specialist, the chances of problems arising because of it being gender confirmation procedures is more or less gone. The common techniques are well developed, and well understood, so the folks doing them regularly have eliminated the really crazy stuff you used to hear about thirty years ago.