URGENT!: Canadian baby boy DIES of circumcision complication; even w/out death, 10% comp. rates are the norm.

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...d.php?t=691990

---

Circumcision - a deadly reminder?

by Avis Favaro on Tue 22 May 2007 01:03 PM EDT

Tucked inside the April edition of the Canadian Pediatric Child Health
Journal is a tragic story. It's never been reported in the lay media
because the family at the centre has declined all interviews. But it
needs to be relayed to doctors and families. It's the story of a baby
boy who died because he was circumcised.

Here is a summary of the case (.pdf) [link: http://www.pulsus.com/Paeds/12_04/Pdf/zwol_ed.pdf]

Ontario's chief coroner, Jim Cairns, details how the child, 7 days
old, was brought to a doctor for a circumcision in 2006. The doctor
used a PlastiBell [link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastibell]
ring. Local anaesthetic was not used.

Five hours later, the parents returned to their family doctor because
the baby was cranky and had blue discolouration below the umbilical
cord when he cried. The doctor noticed that the penis was slightly
swollen. The child was seen in hospital shortly after by a
paediatrician who discharged him.

The baby was then brought to a different hospital 14 hours after the
circumcision. He now had serious swelling and bruising around the
penis and scrotum. He was running a temperature and was tested and
found to be infected with E. coli. (Escherichia coli - a species of
bacterium normally present in intestinal tract of humans and other
animals; sometimes pathogenic; can be a threat to food safety)

Despite being given antibiotics, the baby went into septic shock and
went on to develop multi-organ failure. He died seven days after his
circumcision from hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (a deficiency of
oxygen to the brain).

Dr. Cairns writes that in canvassing colleagues, he found a number of
complications following circumcision in Canada, including:

- two children with necrosis or death of tissue in the penis
- two infants requiring transfusions
- one baby with a buried penis following to a circumcision
- a number of infants with complications related to the use of devices
to perform the circumcisions.

Yet none of these complications were reported in the medical
literature and so are not publicly available for study or for review.

I can't think of anything more devastating for a parent than to have a
child injured, or in this case, killed by an elective procedure. Are
these risks being properly conveyed to parents before a circumcision
is performed? Do doctors even have accurate data on the problems that
can arise following a circumcision?

Perhaps this is why Dr. Cairns calls on a surveillance study by the
Canadian Paediatric Society to get statistics of the actual
complication rate of circumcision, to get a clearer picture on whether
an elective procedure has more risks than doctors suspected.

http://healthblog.ctv.ca/blog/_archi...2/2967860.html