Among the 74 physicians questioned, 57 (76%) used no analgesia, and of the 17 who used analgesia, only 3 (4%) used dorsal penile nerve block anesthesia.
The issue is that all this data is from over twenty years ago, prior to a wave of recommendations made by various medical associations for universal use of local or topical anesthetic. That's part of why this is all so hard to talk about properly, because so much of the data is either decades old or too general to draw conclusions from. I did find this press release claiming 97% percent of relevant training programs teach effective pain relief techniques for circumcision, and that's from fourteen years ago. Given the scale of medical advances made since then in all manner of fields, I don't think it's unreasonable to suppose that anesthetic use has advanced somewhat in the same time period.
This obviously isn't to discount the many (and overwhelming majority if we're looking at total performed in history) non-anesthetized and traumatic circumcisions of the past, but to show that despite the senseless and dangerous nature of male circumcision-as-default it has been made safer and more comfortable, something that I'm not sure can be said for the female counterpart.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suppose that anesthetic use has advanced somewhat in the same time period.
I agree that the rate today is probably higher than the 24% that it was in 1995, but keep in mind that a significant number of doctors practicing medicine today graduated from medical school before ~1980 (including the family doctor who cut me).
something that I’m not sure can be said for the female counterpart.
All of the societies in the world which practice FGC also practice MGC, and they use the same level of medical technology on both sexes.
https://www.academia.edu/8817976
In this African context, genital cutting (of whatever degree of severity) is most commonly performed around puberty, and is done to boys and girls alike. In most cases, the major social function of the cutting is to mark the transition from childhood to adulthood, and it is typically performed in the context an elaborate ceremony. Increasingly, however, African, Middle Eastern, Indonesian, and Malaysian genital alterations (again, of both boys and girls) are being carried out in hospital settings by trained medical professionals—and on infants as opposed to teenagers—on the model of male circumcision in the United States.
I found some data on anesthesia use.
http://cirp.org/library/pain/lander/
http://cirp.org/library/pain/wellington/
https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/wiley/newborn-circumcision-should-not-be-performed-without-anesthesia-Jv03okKBWD
The issue is that all this data is from over twenty years ago, prior to a wave of recommendations made by various medical associations for universal use of local or topical anesthetic. That's part of why this is all so hard to talk about properly, because so much of the data is either decades old or too general to draw conclusions from. I did find this press release claiming 97% percent of relevant training programs teach effective pain relief techniques for circumcision, and that's from fourteen years ago. Given the scale of medical advances made since then in all manner of fields, I don't think it's unreasonable to suppose that anesthetic use has advanced somewhat in the same time period.
This obviously isn't to discount the many (and overwhelming majority if we're looking at total performed in history) non-anesthetized and traumatic circumcisions of the past, but to show that despite the senseless and dangerous nature of male circumcision-as-default it has been made safer and more comfortable, something that I'm not sure can be said for the female counterpart.
I agree that the rate today is probably higher than the 24% that it was in 1995, but keep in mind that a significant number of doctors practicing medicine today graduated from medical school before ~1980 (including the family doctor who cut me).
All of the societies in the world which practice FGC also practice MGC, and they use the same level of medical technology on both sexes.
https://www.academia.edu/8817976