Heart attack

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Heart attack is a rare but very serious complication of circumcision.

The Stamford Advocate (2008) reported the case of Matthew Nelson, who had a medically-unnecessary, non-therapeutic infant circumcision. Matthew started to wheeze at the age of four months. He was seen by several pediatricians and give several different diagnoses and several different treatments which did not help his condition.

Finally he was seen by Dr. Martin, a pulmonologist, who observed Matthew's behavior, then took Matthew away for ten minutes. When he came back he said

I'm going to be blunt," he told the Nelsons, according to Jason's recollection. "Your son does not have asthma. He's had a heart attack and is in heart failure, and he's going to have surgery within 24 hours." Matthew had "cardiac asthma," wheezing associated with heart failure. The seizure he'd had during circumcision was actually a heart attack. Martin explained that a team was en route to whisk the baby to Children's Hospital, where Richard Jonas, the cardiothoracic pediatric surgeon who had operated on Martin's nephew for the same problem, would try to save the baby's life.

Matthew actually had a very serious malformation of his cardiac arteries, that is called Anomalous Left Coronary Artery From the Pulmonary Artery (ALCAPA), which is a rare but serious congenital cardiac anomaly.

Adult candidates for surgery are required to have a work-up to determine their suitability for surgery, however infant boys do not receive the same consideration. The American Academy of Pediatrics long has stated that circumcision should only be performed when the infant boy is "stable and healthy", but nothing is done to verify the suitability of the infant to withstand painful, traumatic surgery. Infant boys are not even given a blood-clotting test prior to the cutting, so there are cases in which the bleeding disorder is discovered only on the operating table.

Baby Matthew was not a candidate for surgery, however he had it anyway.