My Vasectomy Reversal

Guest post from the wife: When it came to chosing a doctor, my primary concern was finding someone with a high vasectomy reversal success rate. After all, our main goal is to get pregnant, and if the surgery fails, that’s not going to happen. We also wanted someone within driving distance of our isolated community, which meant in the San Francisco Bay area or Sacramento. I spoke with my primary care physician, who suggested a doctor based on past patient’s experiences. We had an initial consultation with him (covered by insurance), but were not sure he was the doc for us. I decided to do some research online and spoke to a few friends who have dealt with infertility issues. My search then led me to Dr. John Gould, a male infertility specialist , near Sacramento. I spoke to him on the phone and felt very comfortable with him. He answered all my questions and encouraged me to call any time I had more. It turns out that a friend of a friend works with him and was able to give him a great endorsement. In addition, he performs many more reversals per month than the other doctor we spoke with. I figured more surgeries = more experience = better odds of a successful outcome. Initially, I thought I would just ask the doctors about their success rates and choose the doctor with the highest, but I found that they could not give me a clear answer. One doctor never even tried, he just kept quoting the “average success rate” from the literature. Dr. Gould, on the other hand, gave a good explanation of why he was not able to give exact success rates. He explained that sperm in the semen does not necessarily mean that pregnancy is possible – there are factors such as the fertility of the woman, and antibodies to sperm that can prevent pregnancy. So far, we feel like we made a good choice. The surgery went smoothly and there has been minimal pain. Only time will reveal the rest of the story.

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• Microsurgical vasectomy reversal

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