Korean J Urol.
1994 Apr;35(4):382-385.
Routine Neonatal Circumcision: Safety and Optimal Time
- Affiliations
-
- 1Department of Urology, College of Medicine, Ehwa Womans University, Seoul, Korea.
- 2Department of Urology, College of Medicine, Kon Kuk University, Chung Ju, Korea.
Abstract
- Routine neonatal circumcision has widely performed without anesthesia under the assumption that the penis of neonates does not yet have functioning pain sensory nerve endings at this early stage of development. However, there was no experimental evidence supporting this hypothesis or critical age of limit for routine neonatal circumcision. We evaluated the physiologic responses of 26 infants during operation of circumcision without anesthesia through checking the crying time by sound recording and heart rate by EKG monitoring. Mean chronological and gestational age of neonates at circumcision were 17.9+/-7.6 hours and 277.5+/-10.4 days respectively. Mean operation time was 7.8+/-2.7 min. The patients were crying for average 72% (5.3+/-l.6min.) of total operation time and heart rates were increased by average 19.0% of their basal heart rates. The pattern of change of physiologic stress showed increasing tendency according to the gestational age rather than chronological age. We conclude that employing local anesthesia is needed to alleviate such pain or physiologic stress and we might consider the gestational age of neonates in case of circumcision without anesthesia.
