News monitor: botched circ, not botched bris!

It's not a bris story, but it is a circumcision story.

See here or keep reading

CHICAGO FAMILY WINS $1.3M JUDGMENT FOR SON'S BOTCHED CIRCUMCISION

In 2007, one Chicago family underwent a nightmare at Northwestern hospital: their newborn son’s circumcision went awry, with a doctor amputating the tip of the boy’s penis. According to a lawyer for the family, Dan Kotin, the doctor missed three safety procedures that should have been followed. According to Kotin, the boy lost “the top 40 percent of the head of his penis.”

The doctor’s attorney argued that this was a predictable complication of circumcision, to which Kotin responded, “If that were a known complication to a circumcision procedure, I suggest to you that nobody would dare have a circumcision done because it would be too risky.”

The jury awarded the family $1.3 million in damages.

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Someone recently told me that a certain doctor (pediatric urologist) claims to hear of one case like this a year when a mohel does a circumcision with the traditional shield.

I've spoken to mohels and doctors and all agree this is likely untrue. If the mohel (or any operator) is using any kid of clamp, however, the chances are significantly greater that this could happen.

The person who told me of this doctor said it makes the doctor really angry. If it's true, it should. But the above article is a case in point to the surveyed opinion I have heard from doctors who do touch up work, that errors in circs are more often committed by doctors - OB-GYNs and pediatricians. So I wonder if the doctor from the conversation is anti-Semitic, hates mohels, is making things up, or if he actually has proof.

Are mohels perfect? Who is? But the competent mohels remove the right amount of foreskin and certainly protect the glans.

For clarification as to the differences between a traditional shield v the Mogen Clamp, see this posting.