Randomized Control Trial of Shang Ring Versus Forceps-guided Adult Male Circumcision in Southwestern Uganda.

Adult male circumcision (AMC) can reduce the incidence of HIV transmission by 40-60% in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The World Health Organisation and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS advocate AMC for the reduction of HIV transmission in heterosexual men, and feasibility studies have demonstrated that AMC programmes can be effectively delivered to hyperendemic communities, such as those in SSA. Despite these recommendations, the potential effects of AMC have been attenuated by low uptake, with only 5% of all men who could benefit undergoing surgery to date. Traditional, time-consuming methods of AMC that require formal surgical training limit uptake in low-income countries. Training and implementation by non-physician health providers is dampened by a need to perform approximately 100 procedures to achieve satisfactory operative time and adverse effect rates. The investigators performed a randomised controlled effectiveness study to compare the shang ring (SR) with standard forceps-guided (FG)-AMC in a publicly funded regional referral hospital with a locally trained surgeon in Mbarara, western Uganda.