About a year ago we talked in Babies and more of the need or need to lower the skin of the foreskin to babies to avoid phimosis and today I want to return to the topic because some experts have spoken about the best time to intervene children and curiously, contrary to what many people believe , the ideal age is from the age of eight.
There are many children who are intervened smaller for not waiting for the foreskin to open itself and, worse, there are many pediatricians who they pull the children when they have only six months in order to get the skin to open earlier, producing injuries and wounds that then have to heal and, consequently, achieve the opposite of what is sought: as the scars are less elastic than the Healthy skin, the foreskin may end up being less elastic as well.
Until the year phimosis is physiological, that is, we should not do anything until that moment, beyond lowering the skin a little, always without forcing, so that soap and water enter during the bath. After the first twelve months the adhesions disappear and the phimosis are resolved to the point that by 5-7 years 90% of children no longer have phimosis. Later, between the ages of 8 and 11, only 6% of children are still with her.
Thus, waiting until the age of 8, there are many children who save themselves from surgery, not only because of the intervention itself, but because until that moment anesthesia is general, and operating with local anesthesia is less risky.
This is what Natalio Cruz, national coordinator of the Andrology Group of the Spanish Association of Urology (AEU), said that the phimosis operation is “Relatively banal and simple” and that, therefore, general anesthesia is a measure "Disproportionate". Since at eight years the intervention can already be done under local anesthesia, it seems logical to wait until that moment. In addition, he suggests that the home remedy of pulling should be discarded when "small wounds" occur on the skin.
In summary, let's leave our children's penis alone (If they do not have habitual infections or problems with urination, ills that may make the operation necessary), it is usually they who cure phimosis by wiggling (try to take a diaper off a one-year-old child or more and you will see), and if the thing is not resolved let us give them time, try a corticosteroid cream prescribed by the pediatrician and at age eight, if they are still with phimosis, assess the possibility of doing the intervention, quite simple, already with local anesthesia.
