LONDON CIRCUMCISION REPORTS AND SUMMARIES

Folder contains files received from London NHS funders and hospital trusts with data on circumcisions performed and complications treated. Includes data from the large and long running circumcision scheme in Tower Hamlets, contracted to a GP in the area, showing the rate of early complications and later recircumcisions (no data on other surgical follow ups such as for meatal stenosis). 16/290 babies cut in 2009 in this scheme had experienced a complication within 7 days of which 10 visited the GP and 6 went to A&E. Excluding the 2 who went to the GP and did not get treatment this would be a 4.8% complication rate in one week, trouncing the American assertion that infant circumcision complications affect only 2 per thousand and also the NHS Choice claim that circumcision complications are 'rare' (which would also mean <1%). Tower Hamlets advise that 2005-2009 1492 baby boys were cut religiously by the NHS but apparently none got meatal stenosis treatment as a result. With Iranian research showing 20% of boys will suffer undiagnosed severe meatal stenosis post infant cutting (see link) this indicates a poor attitude to the safety of religious circumcision on the NHS. Or maybe it was just an untruth - Tower Hamlets also said no one got meatal stenosis treatment in the borough in 2009 ...which is vanishingly unlikely. They did admit that of the 1492 cut babies (2005-2009) 11 suffered a second circumcision, a rate of just over 0.7%.