Circumcision and its alternatives in Germany: an analysis of nationwide hospital routine data

Circumcisions are among the most frequent operations in children. Health service data on circumcision in the United States has documented an increase in neonatal circumcisions since 2012. We investigated whether a similar effect could be found in Germany, which does not endorse neonatal circumcision. We analysed German routine administrative data for operations conducted on the preputium in order to analyse the frequency, age distribution, and time-trends in hospital-based procedures on a nationwide basis. There were 9418 [95% confidence interval (CI) 8860-10,029] procedures per year, of which 4977 (95% CI 4676-5337) were circumcisions. Age distributions were highly different between both circumcisions (van der Waerden's χ² = 58.744, df = 4, P