THURSDAY, Sept. 1 (HealthDay News) -- The practice of circumcising newborn males in U.S. hospitals, which increased from the late 1980s to about 2000, appears to be on the wane, according to a report published in the Sept. 2 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Xinjian Zhang, Ph.D., of the CDC in Atlanta, and colleagues examined three independent data sources to monitor trends in in-hospital newborn male circumcision (NMC) from 1999 to 2010.
All three data sources -- the National Hospital Discharge Survey, the Nationwide Inpatient Sample, and the Charge Data Master -- showed a decrease in NMC during eight years of commonly available data, 1999 to 2008. The researchers noted that several factors, such as Medicaid coverage of the procedure, were likely to influence NMC rates.
"When compared using the trends homogeneity test, the decreases in incidence were statistically different (P < 0.01) for the eight years of commonly available data (2001 to 2008); however, the maximum difference in absolute incidence did not exceed 5.9 percentage points for any given year," the authors write.
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