Epidermal inclusion cysts of the clitoris as a complication of female circumcision and pharaonic infibulation.

Female circumcision and pharaonic infibulation is still performed on young females in many parts of the world. It is estimated that two thousand young women living in Britain undergo this ritual every year. The most common complication of this procedure is epidermal inclusion cysts within the infibulation cicatrix. We report the clinical and pathological findings in 10 cases of clitorial inclusion cysts seen at the North West Armed Forbes Hospital, Tabuk, Saudi Arabia between 1989 and 1993. The clinical diagnosis in six cases was that of "clitoral tumor". Two patients presented with complaints of localized pain, one patient presented with dyspareunia and one patient presented with the complaint of a sporadic discharge of white fluid from the circumcision scar. The pathological findings were those of an implantation dermoid in all cases except in two patients where cysts had ruptured and had become inflamed and/or infected. Four cysts were multilocular.