98% of men reported sexual satisfaction and normal sexual function after circumcision
A study, published in the January issue of BJU International, sheds more light on the impact of circumcision on male sexual satisfaction and function. It also significantly raises the bar in terms of methodology and reduced rhetoric in a research area that is highly politicized and fraught with problems.
The study involved 4, 456 sexually experienced Ugandan men (aged 15 to 49) who were HIV negative. All men were scheduled to receive circumcision, however one group was circumcised as soon as the study began and a second group was circumcised 2 years later. Researchers looked at sexual desire, satisfaction and function in both groups at six, 12, and 24 months. Their findings included:
- 98.6 per cent of the circumcised men reported no problems in penetration, compared with 99.4 per cent of the control group.
- 99.4 per cent of the circumcised men reported no pain on intercourse, compared with 98.8 per cent of the control group.
- Sexual satisfaction was more or less constant in the circumcision group – 98.5 per cent on enrolment and 98.4 per cent after two years – but rose slightly from 98 per cent to 99.9 per cent in the control group. This difference was not felt to be clinically significant.
- At the six-month visit there was a small, but statistically significant, difference in problems with penetration and pain among the circumcised group, but this was temporary and was not reported at subsequent follow-up visits.
The authors point out that the gains in sexual function and satisfaction may be a result of the education and treatment received by participants during the study. If a participant disclosed a sexual problem they were referred for treatment.
While this study represents the largest randomized examination of this issue, and in my opinion the researchers do a much better job of acknowledging and minimizing their bias than in many other surveys of sexual satisfaction and circumcision, it is not without limitations.
As the authors themselves point out, both groups reported remarkably low sexual dissatisfaction and sexual dysfunction at the start of the study. Less than 2% of all participants in this Ugandan study reported dissatisfaction or dysfunction, compared to 7% in an earlier trial in Kenya. Figures in the U.S. of erectile dysfunction in the same age group (20-49) are around 6.5%.
They also point out that it was not possible to keep the circumcision status of participants from those administering the study, as such researcher bias is a possibility. Questions about satisfaction and function were asked in face to face interviews, and, as with all sex research, there is a distinct possibility that study participants’ responses were not completely honest.
Not mentioned by the authors is the fact that the number of participants who were circumcised and stayed with the study to the two year mark was very small. While the majority of participants came back at six and twelve months, less than half returned at the two year point. While we can’t know what this means exactly, it may point to this group as being less than representative.
In terms of the studies ability to say something general about sexual satisfaction, there were other methodological limitations. Sexual satisfaction was evaluated solely on the basis of satisfaction with intercourse. While it’s reasonable to focus on intercourse as an activity that is likely to be impacted by circumcision, this research fails to take into account any other sexual acts, thus limiting what we can say about the findings. They also failed to ask participants about how prominent a role intercourse played in their sex lives. So while they may be happy with the intercourse, it’s possible their overall satisfaction went up or down, depending on what they value most in their sex lives.
A final element of this study which I think is particularly exciting is the overall connection the researchers are making to sexual pleasure. Whether one agrees with their agenda or not they are realizing that sexual pleasure is a key part of sexual health promotion and intervention. The fact is that we need more talk about sexual pleasure in all sexual health discussions, whether its about STD prevention, sexual assault prevention, or promotion of healthy sexual behaviors. This study takes an important step in the right direction.
Read more – Sex and Circumcision
Related - Circumcision Info. from About Pediatrics; Circumcision Info. from About Pregnancy/Childbirth
Source:: Kigozi, G., Watya, S., Polis, C.B., et al. “The Effect of Male Circumcision on Sexual Satisfaction and Function, Results from a Randomized Trial of Male Circumcision for Human Immunodeficiency Virus Prevention, Rakai, Uganda” BJU International Vol. 101, No. 1 (2008): 65-70.
Photo credit: Blaise Hayward/Getty Images
There was a study published in the March 2007 issue of BJU International on “The Effect Of Male Circumcision On Sexuality”:
“About 6% answered that their sex lives improved, while 20% reported a worse sex life after circumcision.
This study suggests that adult circumcision adversely affects sexual function in a significant number of men, and the authors suggest that it may be due to loss of nerve endings in the removed skin. In addition, there was an approximately 9% incidence of severe penile scarring or uncomfortable erections from curvature or tethering after circumcision.”
http://tinyurl.com/2fjtxb
Your article on male genital mutilation is all pure bunk. The foreskin was put there by nature to help a male in sexual intercourse and having orgasms. Mutilating the penis like circumcision does, desentizes the penis nerves and over time damages the penis sensativity beyond repair. Cut your own penis off if you want. Leave mine and the unborn male babies penises alone, thank you very much..
It’s good to see that I’m not the only one who sees a lot of problems with this study – mainly that it has such an obvious agenda. The paper itself describes its results as “reassuring”. As you say, but I can’t find it in the study itself, remarkably few of the men, whether circumcised or not, reported any problems at all – far fewer than, for example, in the Laumann studies. Maybe Uganda is a sexual paradise and we should all go there! But it’s more likely that the study and its circumstances just weren’t sensitive enough. More at The Intactivism Pages.
Really good to see what everyone knows already. Cut or not sex is still great.
I was born at home and therefore not circumcised as a chile. I had been married for 43 years and my wife was very supportive of me wanting to be circumcised. So at 64 I was. Finally, I can experience feeling her vagina while moving both in and out. Uncircumcised the outstroke was me moving within my own foreskin. Regrets, yes, that I didn’t have the procedure done along with the vacetomy when I was 32. She says sex is also better for her.
uncurcumsised is better sensitivity and
better intercourse and musterbation pleasure
all the sensity is there all time
Had it both ways and I agree that sexual pleasure has just increased over the last period since being a roundhead.
who is a little suspicious of the articles bias after seeing that the author is Larry “Silverberg”
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Infant circumcision should not be compaired to adult circ which is after puberty’s brain chemistry has matured. Because different infants end up with different sized penis’ after puberty, infant circs will end up causing a larger variety of outcomes after puberty. MINE RIPPED AT THE PEE HOLE AND NOT ENOUGH SKIN CAUSED PAINFUL ERECTIONS AND UGLY SCARS AND REMOVED ALL THE GEE STRING NERVES RESULTING IN E. D. and suicidal depression and a need to take revenge.
I was circumcised a little over 20 years ago, when I was 39. It is certainly possible of course, that my own neuroanatomy and circumcision experience are atypical of those of most men. I happened to be someone for whom the sensations produced by stretching the foreskin fairly tight at the end of each stroke when I masturbated became more and more important the more aroused I became, and it was this stimulation which typically triggered orgasm and ejaculation. This appears to be the reason that my circumcision resulted in a devastating loss of sexual sensation
I had what was considered an “uneventful circumcision” on the advice of a urologist in order to correct a very trivial medical problem that could easily have been dealt with by means of a far less radical procedure. (The skin at the tip of my foreskin had a tendency to split open every so often when I had used it a little too enthusiastically, which could easily have been fixed by means of a trivial procedure which would have widened the tip of my foreskin a little bit, without removing anything.) However, I had been teased so much when I was a kid about “looking really stupid down there” that rather against my better judgment I decided to go along with his advice and let him circumcise me. I really wish I hadn’t, because I have never again been able to experience a single one of the spectacular orgasms I routinely used to have about 4 or 5 times a day on the average.
In fact, for about a year and a half after I was circumcised, I was unable to reach a climax at all (i.e., ejaculate) no matter how hard I tried. And when I finally managed to ejaculate for the first time, I experienced no orgasm whatsoever. Instead, all of the pleasurable sensations I had been experiencing beforehand simple ended abruptly as soon as I started to ejaculate–to be replaced by an uncomfortable feeling accompanying any further stimulation. After another 3 months or so (that is, about 1 3/4 years after I was circumcised), the sexual sensations I had been experiencing before I started to ejaculate would on rare occasions fall off more gradually during ejaculation rather than end immediately, and by about 2 years afterwards, this was happening about 1/3 of the time. However, I still wasn’t ever experiencing an orgasm at all. Today, 20 years later, the only difference is that the pleasurable sensations are more likely to drop off gradually a little over 1/2 the time, but they still end abruptly the rest of the time, and I still haven’t experienced an orgasm.
For me, getting circumcised was an extremely traumatic experience. I also suffered from traumatic disfigurement of my penis of various sorts as a consequence of the fact that the urologist let interns who had apparently never cut or sewn up a real person before try these things for the first time on me. (Too much was taken off the left side, so that my penis had a 90 curve to the left when it was erect–and the scars from the stitches on that side went all over the place; the rest of the incision was highly irregular, not even remotely a straight line; and I started to heal quickly enough that the dissolving sutures hadn’t had a chance to dissolve yet; when I noticed that this was happening, I took out as many of them as I could on my own, but a tiny tunnel of skin grew around each of the stitches I hadn’t been able to get out; also, all of the stitches left scars that together looked something like a railroad track, or like I had been stitched together from parts like Frankenstein. I eventually had to get circumcised all over again by a far better surgeon to clean up the mess the first guy and his little helpers had made! However, note that the great increase in time it now takes me to reach a climax and the lack of orgasm have not resulted from any nerve damage to any other part of my penis. Everything I still have works just as well now as it did before I was circumcised. The problem is simply that for me at least, my foreskin was a critically important source of sexual sensations–which no longer exist.
I wouldn’t wish these sorts of experiences on any guy.
The fact is that the foreskin was designed to function as an integral part of the penis during sexual intercourse, to the advantage and benefit of both the male and the female.
Circumsexuals who advocate male genital mutilation do so for purely selfish, twisted, erotic needs of their own, and they disregard out of ignorance the painful rubbing and chafing which the mutilated penis inflicts upon females.
Rood
I’m so tired of ‘intactivists’ spewing the regular misinformation that “nature intended this, or that” and “nerve endings are lost” blabla
A particularly glib defense of ‘intactivists’ (running out of justifiable medical information) is the argument: “maybe we should cut off our noses to prevent nose cancer”
The fact is, medical science has chimed in, more than enough times to establish that circumcision has many benefits.
Would you consider NOT getting your sons or daughters vaccinated – even if the chance of them becoming ill with something is statistically insignificant? OF COURSE you will vaccinate.
Even if circumcising your son might only reduce his chance of getting penile cancer, a UTI, or HIV, or HPV(herpes) by say, 5% — would you want to be the one to tell your son that you chose NOT to circumcise – based on no valid medical proof – after he develops one of the above conditions???
The intactivists are the strangely sexually motivated, interested in everybody’s penis and circumcision status, claiming anyone who supports circumcision for themselves or their sons are ‘circumsexuals’ – how pathetic.
The evidence is in, and has been over and over again for the last 20 years. Don’t let your own fetish for foreskin prevent you from doing what medical science has told you it valuable – and them come crying later when you end up regretting NOT circumcising.
Statistically? You’re still playing with fire when you ignore medical convention. The idea that circumcision is promoted for some insidious reason by the medical profession, is pure bunk and simply ridiculous.
I was cut as an adult, and only regret it wasn’t done sooner, or when I was born.
The fact that the majority of adult, sexually active men in the United States (including a surprisingly large percentage of American physicians) have for a very long time now been men who were circumcised in infancy and have never had any direct personal experience with what it is like to be a sexually active man with an intact foreskin or with being circumcised as an adult makes majority opinions in the US about such things extremely unreliable. In particular, the fact that most Americans today (or even most American physicians) may believe (a) that the foreskin is not an especially important source of sexual sensations or (b) that circumcision in adulthood will not result in a substantial loss of ability to perceive sexual sensations–has no relevance whatsoever to the simple fact (1) that the foreskin is by far the most important source of sexual sensations in the intact human male; and (2) that circumcision in adulthood results in a substantial loss of ability to perceive sexual sensations, a loss which may or may not prove to be particularly troubling to any given man–but which is certainly likely to be so.
It may seem difficult to figure out whether the findings of a given research study are likely to be reliable or not, but this is often much easier to do than most people may realize. For example, it is very easy to find out that the negative consequences which men circumcised in adulthood may complain about include loss of sexual sensation, a subsequent need always to use a lubricant for sexual activity, and unhappiness with the resulting appearance of the penis (e.g., very noticeable “railroad track” scaring around the entire circumference of the penis), but not difficulty with penetration or painful intercourse. It is also readily apparent that any opinion concerning “satisfaction” with sexual intercourse is a generalization necessarily based on a number of different underlying factors. Thus, no research can concerning the possible negative consequences of circumcision in adulthood can possibly be considered to be either valid or competent in nature which (a) collects data concerning things such as painful intercourse or difficulty with penetration, (b) fails to collect data concerning such things as loss of ability to perceive sexual sensations, need to use a lubricant, and/or unhappiness about resulting appearance, or (c) collets data concerning “satisfaction” but not about the various factors on which this generalization must necessarily have been based. Any study of this nature comprises nothing more scientifically invalid, meaningless, incompetent research based on an experimental design invalidated by very substantial experimenter bias and/or substantial experimenter ignorance or naiveté (of an essentially intentional nature) concerning the actual likely consequences of circumcision in adulthood.
Was the research concerning the consequences of circumcision conducted in ?? by ?? et al. therefore a “cut above” other research? No, this was clearly an incompetently designed, scientifically invalid study whose findings are totally meaningless. Unfortunately, no matter how obvious this may be to uncircumcised scientists, the fact that this research has been positively reported in the US public news media many times means that many people will mistakenly believe that the findings of this study are correct when in actuality this could not possibly be even remotely the case.
Very sorry–the last paragraph of my previous message was supposed to begin as follows:
Was the research concerning the consequences of circumcision conducted in Uganda by Kigozi et al. therefore a “cut above” other research [Kigozi, G., et al. “The Effect of Male Circumcision on Sexual Satisfaction and Function, Results from a Randomized Trial of Male Circumcision for Human Immunodeficiency Virus Prevention, Rakai, Uganda” BJU International Vol. 101, No. 1 (2008) ]? No, [...]
The abstract of the published paper can be found here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18086100
The idea that the foreskin must be useful to an adult is predicated on some fanciful argument that any part of the body must have a use- from birth to death. Organs like the thymus and appendix show that such thinking is simplistic.
Well conducted studies on circumcision in adults shows that for the vast majority there is no difference in sexual appreciation, for some sensations are better and for others, worse. The only people capable of clearly describing what circumcision does are men circumcised as adults.
The rest of you men can weigh in on it but your opinions are just that- opinions with absolutely NO basis in experience. This has led to all the rubbish being promulgated about the value of the foreskin.
I was circumcised as an adult and had quite a good understanding of sexual feelings before the procedure. I had no adult foreskin issues, either.
The comments I would like to make are that the sensations in intercourse are vastly improved as I can feel vaginal contact all along the shaft during all phases of intromission, the cutline is highly sensitive in a pleasant way, the glans has lost a lot of sensitivity- the “ouch don’t rub it too hard” kind-, the ability to control the point of ejaculatory inevitability has vastly improved.
Moreover, there is nothing special about the foreskin’s outer layer. The mucosa has strongest sensations near and including the frenulum, but otherwise is nothing incredible and the circumcision scar for whatever reason becomes a point of intense pleasure.
Note: very few men rub their glans while masturbating in order to achieve orgasm! Yes, the foreskin may ride up over the corona a little bit but that is hardly full on glans stimulation.
I suggest the glans is NOT the part of the penis to study as it seems to me that– this is an opinion based on my experiences- the fully enclosed and massaged shaft up to and including the corona, mostly rlying on deep pressure receptors, is what causes mounting sexual tension. Otherwise, masturbation would look very different from the “usual” technique that the vast majority of males employ where gripping the shaft is what does the trick.
This says to me that the foreskin has very little use in sexual pleasure, other than that parts of it feel “nice.”
The fact that sex is the same or better for almost 90% of males circumcised as adults should make the intactivists revisit their stubbornly and incorrectly held views.
For the sad male who has his sex lfe ruined after a circumcision the best help is psychiatric. Common sense and reality suggests that almost all “clipped” males have a great sex life with thunderous orgasms. These uncommon few fellows are the medical exception with medically exceptional psychological disturbances and their views, while valid for them, should have NO influence on any scientific research or discussion on the role of circumcision and sexual outcomes in general. These men are in a unique category and must be considered a separate, if unfortunate group, worthy of research as a separate category.
It’s always interesting to me what the pro circ group wants to do other people’s penises, while the no circ group is concerned about keeping people from doing things to other people’s penises. I for one wish that “other people” had kept their hands off my penis. So much so that I wish I could see my circumciser face to face. I’m quite sure that I would return the favor by removing and or mutilating some of their body parts. I’m very sure that there are thousands of men that are similarly upset.
While I’m sure that for some men it is important it is important to not that in the study stating 6% imprpove and 20% had worsened that a majority (the remaining 74% ie supermajority) of the men it study reported little or no change.
I completley understand and sympathyze with leaving it alone but I think it is an exaggeration that the Foreskin is the “best part” for some men it is for other it isn’t and most studies would say it’s fairly indifferent.
As for the commenter above I’m sure there are but I am also sure that there are Millions who are fairly neutral.
As for Damaging Females I would think that if it were to do such a thing and often it would have never caught on and have been retained in so many cultures.
William If the Damage is “beyond repair” wouldn’t that mean that “restoration” is all pure bunk as well?
I think a lot of people are just overreacting.