Introduction: Circumcision is a religious practice as well as a surgical procedure having its risks and benefits. There are several surgical methods for circumcision. The choice depends on skill and preference of medical personnel performing the surgery. The plastibell technique is one of the commonly performed procedures done under local anaesthesia, mostly on new-borns, infants and young children. The results of the technique have been evaluated in many studies throughout the world. We have done a large number of cases and present the results of our retrospective descriptive study.

Materials and Methods: This retrospective descriptive study was conducted at the clinic of Dr Mohammad Zahid, Nal Sahib Square, Hansapuri, Nagpur from January 2013 to August 2023. Clinical records of the infants who underwent circumcision were collected.  Infants whose parents requested methods other than plastibell and infants with bleeding disorders or a family history of such disorders were excluded from the study. The indication for circumcision was for religious reasons in all cases except in 15 of them. Post-operative complications if any were noted.

Result: A total of 9346 male babies underwent circumcision with the plastibell technique. The average age of the patients was between 7 day old neonate to 12 years. The mean operative time was 12.5 ±2.7 minutes. The time it took for the ring to fall off was 3 ± 9 days. Complications were seen in less than 0.3 percent cases. The commonest complication encountered were pain, swelling, bleeding and non-falling of ring in speculated time which were managed effectively with the help of paediatric surgeon.

Conclusion: Male circumcision is one of the oldest surgical procedures performed specially in Gulf and Asian countries. According to the results of our study, circumcision with the plastibell method is very safe, cheaper than other methods, less painful, less time consuming and with very rare incidences of side effects. In fact we recommend that it should be the method of choice for doing circumcision in low income countries like ours for the benefit of the masses.

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Dr Gurmeet Singh Sarla

Senior Advisor Surgery, MH Khadki, India