Among the numerous birth control techniques, vasectomy appears to be one of the most drastic.
While the use of pills or condoms is understood as circumstantial methods – that is, they are used because they do not want to have offspring at that time – in other cases in which the decision not to have children is permanent, couples usually opt for definitive solutions, such as tubal ligation in the woman, or vasectomy in men.
However, the problem comes when, once one of these treatments has been applied, there is a change of mind. Can anything be done about it? Is vasectomy reversible?
Vasectomy is performed as an irreversible and definitive treatment. This means that no doctor is going to perform this intervention on someone who says that they want to have children in the future. But the truth is that circumstances change, and sometimes, what was a meditated decision and with the appearance of being permanent, ends up changing because the circumstances are different from the moment in which it was made: a new partner, a new personal situation, the loss of a child… Resulting in the intentions to reverse the vasectomy.
In these cases, there is a possibility that the vasectomy will be reversible, although the degree of success is not always the same.
Vasectomy is, in itself, a fairly simple operation, which consists of sectioning the vas deferens, which are those that connect the sperm formed in the testicles with the prostate, where they are incorporated into the semen.
When the time elapsed since the vasectomy is a few years, there is the possibility of performing the process in reverse with a high success rate. This intervention simply rejoins the severed ducts, allowing the natural process to take place again.
If the time elapsed between one intervention and another is less than 5 years, the percentage of interventions in which the objective of having sperm in the ejaculated semen again is achieved is around 90% and 70% of achieving pregnancy.
However, this success rate for reversing vasectomy is considerably reduced when the intervention was performed more than 10 to 15 years ago, to the point that sometimes it is preferred not to opt for reversal and to apply an alternative treatment.
This treatment is usually the extraction of sperm by aspirating them from the ducts or by means of a testicular biopsy, and their subsequent union with eggs extracted from the couple’s ovaries, in what is known as in vitro fertilization.
Thus, to the question of whether it is the Reversible vasectomy, the answer is yes, but depending on the case, pregnancy can be achieved naturally or not.
In this video, Dr. Rodrigo Henao, Gynecologist Specialist in Human Reproduction at inSer, Human Fertility Institute, expands on the information about vasectomy and its possible reversal.
