PEDIATRICS Vol. 82 No. 4 October 1988, pp. 679-680
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Congenital Absence of the Hymen Only a Rumor?

CAROLE JENNY MD1

1 Department of Pediatrics, Harborview Medical Center, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98104

In Reply.—

The letter from Mor and Merlob in which they note that all of their large group of infants examined for congenital malformations had hymens1 reinforces the fact that congenital absence of the hyman occurs rarely, if at all. If one were to recalculate confidence intervals using their data pooled with the data from our study done in Seattle,2 the expected frequency of congenital absence of the hymen in the population that could allow the inspection of 25,068 and 1,131 infants without finding the malformation would range from .00011 to 0 at the 95% confidence level.

The data from Mor and Merlob's group help put the myth that girls are often born without hymens to rest!