Complications of female circumcision in Nigerian Igbos.

An analysis is made of 43 children and 15 adult female patients who presented with post-circumcision complications at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Enugu, between January 1973 and December 1980; 57 patients had been circumcised within 21 days of birth and one patient in the seventh month of her first pregnancy. Age of presentation varied with the severity of the symptoms: 21 children and 11 adults presented with varying degrees of labial occlusion, while 9 children and 4 adults had implantation dermoids. Urinary retention was the problem in 12 children and one adult.