child circumcisions in 2011 at 91 English hospital 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. Note regarding non therapeutic circumcision (NTC) that this is frequently performed in the NHS as an outpatient operation so the figures for NTC ops in this table are only a partial picture (there are some 130 or so Hospital trusts so they don't even represent all the inpatient operations). Not all trusts replied to my questions and not all gave responses in the same format, hence the partial picture. Aside the issue of non therapeutic circumcisions on unconsenting subjects the data also suggests a potentially significant 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). Detailed returns from individual hospitals are available on request (covering mainly 2009 and 2011 - some a longer period). I won't upload everything as it's just too much.