When circ's go bad...

ADULT male circumcision is foreign to me. Infant circumsision falls within the scope of my specialty (OB/NICU) and I am knowledgeable in that. I didn't tell you it was worthless and I wouldn't dream of telling an adult man what he can or can't do with his penis. You want to lop the whole thing off and I could care less. No skin off my back (or other body part). If you can point me in the direction of any stats on the need for circs in adult men I'd be happy to look at it. I'm just telling you that after spending most of my life in a country where most men aren't circed I have never known a man who needed to have it done as an adult. That's what makes me wonder how often it is necessary.

"Us women" only get to decide on this matter when its our sons and if I have one, I wouldn't have him circed since there is no research showing any medical benefits to warrant routine circumcision. If you have your sons done, it's your business and not mine.

I kind of take exception to the comment about us women telling men what to do. By the same token parents are taking away their child's decision on whether or not to keep their foreskin.

If my boys don't like their foreskins they can choose to do what they want when they are adults. I think adult men are perfectly capable of handling a circ if they so choose. Probably not even as painful as labor and delivery. And definately less painful than a section.

Circs are a huge cash cow for drs. They get paid by the insurance/patient for the procedure, then they can turn around and sell the foreskin too!

Ewwww...we used to have the foreskin collector that came around in the AM's. Ewwww! They use them to help grow grafts and such, but man, gross!!!!

I have seen more than my share of botched up circs....some looked like Jaws came in and had an appetizer, one was literally skinned, we had one brillant resident that came over for a bleeder and decided to nitric stick (I think that is what they are called...we don't use them on anything) it and burned a hole just below the glans...she did this when no one was around the bed! The attending OB had to come over and the kid had to go for emergency surgery with urology as she made right thru to the urethra! How she did that was so beyond anything I had ever seen. That was the first depo I ever had to give.

No, it seems that you "automatically assumed" that she assumed it was worthless. She never once stated that. I think you need to go back and re-read her post.

that is simply horrible. OMG.

I have seen a couple bad circs. The obstetricians do the circs in my institution. They prefer to use silver nitrate when there is a bleeder. This stuff is really ugly. the last bad one I saw the OB used 4 silver nitrate sticks, never wrote a note in the chart, then hopped an airplane later that day out of the country--literally. I wonder what ever hapened to that little boys penis. One of the obstetricians also uses gelfoam around the circ. As this material 'melts' it really looks like sloughing skin.
I would venture to say about 95% of the males born at our hospital have circumsision. --nursenickie

i have seen silver nitrate used on circs before and they look like
ugly black burns (actually i think that's what silver nitrate does).
i've never seen the healed penis afterward though.

WOW!! That's amazing to me!!! I don't work in a hospital yet but I'd be curious to know about our local hospital. I'd say about 90% of my friends and relatives don't circ!! Maybe it's regional?????

During my OB rotation, I watched a few circs and one was done by a second-year resident. She had circed a few kids before with supervision so they let her do this one herself. I was comforting the baby while she did the procedure. So she goes ahead and makes the cut, then goes..."Hmmmm.." She tells me she'll be right back. She comes back into the nursery with another resident who agrees, "Hmmmm...that doesn't look right." I might add that each time they look, they're moving the cut foreskin up and down, all around, and the baby is screaming around his pacifier. Finally they get an attending to come in...takes one look...turns out the resident didn't examine baby and he had a hypospadius! The attending sighed and commented that the baby would need extensive surgery later, and because the resident had circed the baby, it would be that much harder to repair the hypospadius.

I might add that this particular hospital had a policy of putting EMLA cream on the babies an hour before the procedure...if they had insurance. If they didn't, NO ANALGESIA was used. NONE.

In the NICU where I work, about 80% of the boys are circed before discharge. If they have an upcoming surgery (about 50% of the preemie boys end up with hernias) they'll do the circ in the OR while the baby is under anesthesia. If it's done up on the unit, urology does the procedure. We give Tylenol an hour before, then q6h after for at least 24 hours. They also use lidocaine for a local block, thankfully.

I'd have to say 98% of our boys get circ'd. It definitely is regional. I'm in northeastern California but if you head over to the coast to Humboldt County - one of the biggest pot growing areas by the way, the circ rate goes down.

steph