Whether or not parents choose to circumcise their infant sons, there will always be a small group of men who want what they don't have.
Dr. Christopher Saigal, an associate professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, often sees uncircumcised men in his practice seeking circumcisions for medical reasons, including phimosis, recurring urinary tract infections and genital warts. Occasionally he also hears from men who regret having been circumcised.
"A small faction of men feel they have been harmed by circumcision," he says. "Some say they lose sensation."
Though anecdotally men report otherwise, the argument that an uncircumcised penis is more sensitive than a circumcised one is not well supported in the literature, he says.
A recent controlled study published in the January issue of BJU International, the British Journal of Urology, looked at nearly 4,500 Ugandan men, ages 15 to 49, who were all sexually experienced. Researchers randomly selected half to undergo circumcision, and half to have a circumcision in 24 months. They compared the two groups at six, 12 and 24 months to measure sexual satisfaction and performance.
The circumcised group's rate of sexual satisfaction remained constant, with 98.5% reporting sexual satisfaction before circumcision, and 98.4% reporting so two years after the procedure.
Dr. Ira Sharlip, a San Francisco-based urologist and spokesman for the American Urological Assn., says he has done a few foreskin restorations, though it's not a common request. The procedure involves making incisions in the skin around the penis to allow excess skin to be drawn forward. "As it heals, the skin stays over the head of the penis, and re-creates the appearance of foreskin," Sharlip says.
Some physicians use a nonsurgical technique where patients wear a device that stretches the skin around the penis and pulls it forward. Men need to do this every day for several months.
"Patients' reasons for the procedure vary," Sharlip says. "Some are angry at their parents for making this choice for them and want to undo the damage. Some don't like the way it looks."
More common are men at the other end of the spectrum. Dr. David Cornell, a urologist who runs the Circumcision Center in Atlanta, sees men who want a circumcision because they prefer the appearance and because they want to feel more comfortable socially.
