child circumcisions in 2011 at 91 English hosptital trusts

This table is a collation of returns I received from hospital trusts showing their number of child circumcisions in 2011 with age and whether therapeutically coded or not. I think it is a useful snapshot of practice across England - it shows how circumcisions were performed in age groups 0-4, 5-9 and 10-17 and how many were explicitly coded as non medically necessary. Aside the issue of non therapeutic circumcisions on unconsenting subjects it also suggests a potentially huge issue of the false coding of unnecessary circumcisions as necessary. Note for example that Su Anna Boddy of BAPS (a member of working group which formulated the 2007 policy on foreskin conditions) has stated publicly that therapeutic circumcision is 'virtually never' necessary in a child under five. BAPS also state that non-retractability (developmental phimosis) can be normal even in the late teens. Danish and Japanese researchers have both shown in fact that full natural retraction tends to happen sometime after the tenth birthday. So with that knowledge, and also the huge variation in numbers we can assume that many of the therapeutic operations shown here were not therapeutic, particularly as most were coded with the ICD 10 diagnosis code N47X (Redundant prepuce, phimosis and paraphimosis). Perhaps it's actually the use of this coding in childhood that is redundant...not the foreskin.