The unpredictability of life might dictate that you wish to undo the done and have a vasectomy reversal. While success for this procedure is not guaranteed, vasectomy reversal does in fact work for most men. In this very informative, …
Tag: vasectomy reversal
All the King’s Men: How to Put a Vas Deferens Back Together Again
Of the 500,000 people every year who get vasectomies, about 5 to 10 percent change their minds after the fact. The procedure, which sterilizes men by severing the tube supplying sperm to the urethra, was once considered a permanent operation. And in fact, doctors still generally discourage undoing a vasectomy. But, as MSNBC reports, technological advances and expanding coverage for vasectomy reversals among health insurance companies are leading to a rise in “unsnipping”:
“Insurance companies are beginning to cover vasectomy reversals because the success rate of reversals is as good — if not better — than in vitro fertilizations (for women), in terms of live pregnancies,” said Dr. Natan Bar-Chama, a male infertility specialist and urologist at Reproductive Medicine Associates of New York.
With the renewed interest in the tongue twistingly-named vasovasostomy, it’s worth exploring just how these things work. Despite the common belief that you cannot splice once you’ve sliced, there are actually two ways patients can have their vas deferens restored to their former, intact state.
The first method is relatively simple….
Unsnipped: More men seeking vasectomy reversals
Urologists report increase in American men who opt to restore their fertility.
Some 20 years after welcoming two daughters into the world — and 17 years after his vasectomy — Rick Perk found a second shot at love and yearned for a second chance at children.
So, then pushing age 50, Perk got unsnipped in 2010. But he didn’t know if the delicate operation worked until his current wife, Erin, 31, phoned while Perk was chauffeuring one of his girls home from a college visit.
“It was St. Patrick’s Day last year and Erin is Irish so her friends had wanted her to go out. She’d said no, that something was feeling different. She picked up a pregnancy test then called and broke the news,” Perk recalled. “I almost drove off the road, I was so excited.”
Even if your husband had a vasectomy years ago, it may not be too late to reverse it
New research just out, led by Dr. Paul Turek, a San Francisco-based specialist in male fertility and sexual health, shows that even very old vasectomies — as old as those done 38 years ago — can be reversed with good results, he says. “For decades, conventional wisdom has been that the older the vasectomy, the less likely that ejaculated sperm returns after microsurgical vasectomy reversal. But this may not be true,” said Turek in a press release about the new research, which was presented this week at the American Urological Association in Atlanta.
Turek and his colleagues studied 343 men who’d had vasectomy reversals, comparing those with “younger” vasectomies (those from one to 15 years old) and “older” vasectomies (those 16 to 38 years old) to see if there was a difference in the amount of the sperm in the ejaculate following the reversal. Says Turek, the research found that “older vasectomies up to 38 years did not have worse outcomes after reversal surgery.” That should be reassuring, he says, adding, “don’t be shy about looking into vasectomy reversal for a vasectomy older than 15 years; it can often be reversed quite well.” Turek notes that a limitation of his research was that it did not examine pregnancy rates, but only ejaculated sperm counts in men who’d had their vasectomies reversed.
If your husband has had a vasectomy and you’re considering a round of IVF, it may be worth talking to a specialist in reversals — not least because of the very different costs of the two procedures: “In general, a vasectomy reversal is about one-third to one-half the price of one IVF cycle,” notes Turek, adding that a reversal costs about $5,000 to $9,000, on average. About 5 to 7 percent of vasectomized men get a reversal procedure.
Turek adds that while “you can get great results reversing a vasectomy of any age in the right hands, the problem is that not everyone can do it well.” To find the right specialist, read Turek’s “Insider’s Guide to Vasectomy Reversal.”
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