Description

Dr. Bastuba explains if a vasectomy can be reversed.

Transcript

How Reversible Is Vasectomy Vasectomy reversal is possible in almost everybody. There are very few things that can stop a male from making sperm. Vasectomy is not one of them. So that a male following a vasectomy continues to make sperm at the same rate he would have if he had never had a vasectomy, whether it has been 2 years, 20 years, or 40 years out. I have done vasectomy reversals nearly 50 years out and I still find quite useful sperm. The chance for success in terms of putting sperm back in a male’s ejaculate is 90% are better in my hands and that’s pretty much for all comers. Now there are a few things that can stop sperm production, but they are few and far between. These would be major things such as high dose chemotherapy, high dose radiation therapy, typically for a major cancer and even still, while I probably can’t reconstruct that patient, we could likely still find sperm in that patient. Also high dose radiation exposure or high dose long-term use of anabolic steroids can lead to no sperm in the ejaculate, but again, oftentimes we can find small amounts of sperm in the testicular tissue itself and this can be used with in vitro fertilization techniques.