Epidemiology

The prevalence of cryptorchidism in newborn term infants is 2% to 8% worldwide.[3][4] This decreases to 1% to 2% after the first few months of life, because congenital cryptorchidism may spontaneously resolve with the neonatal peak of testosterone by 3 months.[5][6] In northern England, prevalence was recently reported as 7.6 per 1000 male live births, with an orchiopexy rate of 1.8 per 1000 males ages 0 to 4 years.[7] There is controversy regarding reports of increasing incidence potentially due to endocrine disruption/environmental exposures, and more studies are needed to prove or disprove this hypothesis.[5][8] Two-thirds of cases are unilateral, while the remainder are bilateral.

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