1 Dept of Pediatrics, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Woodland Hills, CA 91364
To the Editor.
Wiswell and Geschke recently reported a decreased incidence of neonatal bacteremia among circumcised babies.1 Surprisingly, the neonatal bacteremia rate in the whole population was 40 per 136 086 (0.029%). In other studies, the rate of bacteremia has been substantially higher (0.1% to 1.0%2). If these other estimates apply, a large majority of the babies in question were missed in the analysis. The authors suggest that some portion of the patients were admitted to other hospitals and thus could have been missed.