Richard: Hello! My name is Richard. I am in now late 30s and I am from Dayton, Ohio and the question that I have is during my first marriage, me and wife we decided that I would have vasectomy. Well, since that time I've remarry and me and my current wife, we have decided that we want to have children but I was wondering if there was any possible way to reverse the vasectomy that I have had and if so what are the risk involved potentially?
Randall Meacham: Richard, I am glad you asked that question because there is lot of misunderstanding about the potential for reversing a vasectomy. Number one, vasectomy reversal is actually a very common procedure. I have done several hundred vasectomy reversals myself. It's also a low risk procedure.
As within the operative procedure, there is a potential risk of bleeding or infection, but that would be very uncommon. The most important factor in determining, whether a vasectomy reversal is going to be successful or not, number one is how many of the procedures, the surgeon you are speaking to, has done, but number two it's been the length of time since the vasectomy itself was done. The longer the period of time, unfortunately, the less successful the procedure is likely to be.
Having said that, the overall success rate for vasectomy reversal should be 50% to 60%, it's also possible to harvest sperm surgically and use those sperm in an In Vitro Fertilization procedure where an individual egg is injected with an individual's sperm in the laboratory, and then resulting embryos are transferred back to the female. So the good news is we have very effective methods, we are helping man and their partners to achieve fertility after vasectomy.
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