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Pain
,→Contemporary attitudes and practices: add standard of care section.
===Contemporary attitudes and practices===
Little is known about current attitudes and practices regarding the use of analgesia in circumcision of the newborn. Application of analgesia prior to neonatal nontherapeutic circumcision takes additional physician time, so there may be a tendency to skip it.
==Standard of care==
It is now clear that boys are born with healthy foreskins without evidence of disease. Therefore there are no indications for infant circumcision, which is a non-therapeutic and medically-unnecessary surgical operation. Circumcision excises the highly functional foreskin, which provides numerous protective, immunological, sensory, and sexual functions, so it is a lasting and irreversible injury. Non-therapeutic circumcision should not be performed is the standard of care.
Nevertheless, some non-therapeutic circumcisions of boys will continue to be performed for religious reasons, ethnic reasons, and the emotional needs of parents. When a circumcision is to be performed, the standard of care requires that analgesia be provided to reduce the extreme level of pain.
==Videos==