Sperm Return: Dr. Mistry Explains Success Rates For Vasectomy Reversals
Speaker 1:
Welcome back to the Armour men’s health hour with dr. Mystery and Donna Lee. Hello,
Speaker 2:
Welcome to the Armour men’s health hour. I’m dr. Mister your host here as always with my excellent radio producer and fellow fellow partner in crime at our urology practice, Donald Lee and the world’s worst radio producer. It’s okay. You know, E for effort they say,
Speaker 3:
Just showing up isn’t that half the battle I showed up.
Speaker 2:
I’m not sure why E for efforts , the thing, in any case, I’m dr. Mystery. I’m a board certified draws . That’s my real name, not so gimmicky.
Speaker 3:
S T R Y. You know, people always say there’s no I in team, but I always say there’s an M and there’s an E. And that spells me.
Speaker 2:
That’s great. I think there’s a whole bunch of people out there looking for a COVID tutor. So maybe, maybe you get a job on the side. This show is brought to you by our urology practice NAU urology specialists . We are the second biggest urology group in town. We offer the full array of services that you would expect from a urologist men’s fertility , uh , advanced robotic oncologic care. We do lots and lots of testosterone. We have excellent providers to do advanced testosterone therapy. We offer multiple forms of testosterone replacement. Our erectile dysfunction program is second to none. We have a fellow trained fellowship, trained erectile dysfunction specialist on our team, dr. Christopher Yang, who spent an entire year dealing with advanced erectile dysfunction and is truly an expert in the field. He has a great name for urology . Yang is great. Name for urologist . We offer advanced therapy for stones, whether it be large stones in your kidney or small stones in your bladder or ureter. And then of course, the options that we have available for your BPH are also more expansive than virtually anywhere else that you’re going to find the city, including the inclusion of prostate artery embolization, a noninvasive, minimally invasive, no catheter, no going through your penis kind of way of treating an enlarged prostate. We had a , one of the most listened to webinars in our practice history on prostate artery embolization, and we still get requests for it.
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And if you want to hear it, I can email it to you. Yeah .
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Right. If you’re interested in learning about prostate artery, embolization, or hearing about our webinar, we have it on our email .
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Yeah . I’ll send you a link. It’s about half an hour. It’s dr . Mystery with our group and dr. Wood with advantage, ER , the prostate artery
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That’s right. You can call us at (512) 238-0762. During the week. I will probably answer the phone as well, as well as some of our other patient care coordinators. You can email us at Armour men’s health@gmail.com. It’s armor men’s health@gmail.com. Super easy armor . Men’s health.com is our website. If you want to become a patient or send us questions, I promise to respond to the email and we’ll ask your questions on air anonymously. I will also send you the podcast link. If you miss the show on KLBJ news radio, KLBJ Saturdays 3:00 PM, Sundays, 4:00 PM.
Speaker 2:
Your questions helped drive the show, and we really appreciate all of your questions. So please send them along. Donna went and shared the latest question.
Speaker 3:
The latest question, I thought it was appropriate. Cause we haven’t talked about it in a hot minute. Is dr. Mystery, do you handle the sector? Me reversals. If so, what is the likelihood of it being successful? Well that’s okay .
Speaker 2:
Great question. Male. Fertility is something that we do quite a bit of here. I pride myself on having performed many, many sperm extraction procedures and the secretary reversals for some of the busiest OB-GYNs and reproductive endocrinologist. Those are the doctors that do IVF doctors in this city. And so the vasectomy reversal, some that we come across quite a bit. The national numbers suggest that up to 10% of men who had a vasectomy will consider B being a father or a dad again, and want to know what their, what their options are, how do they get the sperm out of them? So the vasectomy reversal, some men are even surprised that you can reverse it as ectomy the vasectomy itself. You’re finding the tubes that transport the sperm from the test school to the prostate, you then cut a small piece out and separate the two ends and hide them from each other of a second . Reversal entails you going in there, finding the twins, cleaning them off and sewing them back together. The skill set to do that is a microsurgical skillset that is not held by all urologists. Not all. You’re all deserved to really tough. When we trained to do it, we actually train on mouse, vast deference .
Speaker 3:
That’s really that’s right . Little tiny, little tiny mice. Why don’t you do that? That’s not a tiny
Speaker 2:
Inherit . Have you can do a mouse one. You can do a human one. Yeah .
Speaker 3:
Yes . It makes sense.
Speaker 2:
And you work out in our training at Baylor college of medicine , uh , the finest medical institution in the world. We would take arteries and put them back together veins and put them back together and then put the vast deference back together for the mouse. And , uh , the stitch that we use to put the two ends together or even thinner and lighter than a human hair. It’s the same stitch that people use to actually like, so parts of the eye together
Speaker 3:
When your hands are really big, I don’t know how you do that. Are you kidding? I’m like a Maestro under the microscope. Oh boy.
Speaker 2:
The success for the vasectomy reversal. If it’s done in the proper hands actually has very little to do with whether or not you put the two ends of the tubes back together properly. So when they talk about a vasectomy reversal, failing, most people think in their mind that guy probably didn’t. So the two things write together, but that’s not the case. If you know what you’re doing, you’re going to sew those two tubes together every time perfectly because you’re doing it under the microscope. If you’ve done a lot of them, you know what you’re doing? The reason it fails is because the longer you’ve had a vasectomy that blockage causes damage upstream near the testicle to the tubes where the perm are being stored. It’s called the epididymis. It’s not like a garden hose where you just, you just cut the garden hose in and just open it up and saw it’s all back in this case, when you squeeze the garden hose, there’s something that happens wrong at the faucet level. That , and so the longer it’s been since your vasectomy, the more potential for damage there is at the faucet level or at the testis level. In this case, the vasectomy reversal can fail. And its failure is directly proportional to the length of time that it’s been since the time of your vasectomy. We usually consider seven years and 15 years to be those two times in which there’s a massive step drop off in success, you know, less than seven years. I generally quote patients at 85% or higher between seven and 15 years. I generally quote a 65% and over 15 years, about 35%. So those are kind of the numbers that we quote. So what do you do if you want to be a dad again, you want to father children and you’ve had a vasectomy, let’s say 12 years ago, and you want better than average or better than even chances of this being successful. So we have another alternative, which is a sperm extraction procedure, and we can actually go straight into the epididymis or testicle and get sperm, but that sperm has to be used for IVF. So if you’re going to try to have a child naturally than the vasectomy reversal is a very reasonable cost, effective, easy to tolerate, quick recovery kind of way to regain that function back.
Speaker 3:
Wow, that’s really intense though. You better think this through, if you’re going to get a second to me, because we have to remember, we had the funny patient who got a second me and then the next day his wife insisted and he get a reversal
Speaker 2:
That’s called marital communication .
Speaker 3:
That’s called a problem. Tell your wife that you’re getting it done.
Speaker 2:
You know , there are some practices that require the wife’s consent for the man to get a vasectomy that I don’t think is correct by any , by any means. But in this case, it would have been for your own sake for your own sake.
Speaker 3:
Yeah. I remember the guy, you have to have a witness and the guy’s witness signed. So we had all the appropriate paperwork and the wife said, you can’t do that without my signature. And I said, well, generally speaking that we have to have a witness. And she goes, I bet it was his father. It was his father. Oh my goodness. It was such a funny story. Marital communication . Right?
Speaker 2:
Um, for, for more information on getting a vasectomy reversal, please contact our office. The approximate costs . These are usually not paid for by insurance. Uh, the approximate cost between six and 6,060 $500, but that includes everything, my fee, hospital fee, anesthesia fee. And then of course the equipment fee, these stitches, which we use about 12 cost, about $500 a piece. They’re very , uh, well, no, no. We , we, we, we use six and they cost about 500 orbs. Uh , uh, five, five are North speed . They’re very, they’re very expensive stitches. Let me start again. We use 12 of them and they cost $50 a piece. So they’re expensive and we use 12 of them, $50 a piece. That’s right. I’ll try to spit it out of my mouth . That that’s correct. The numbers weren’t working out. A lot of my dad’s right. There are , there are ways that you can get this finance. We use care credit, especially if you’re a vasectomy is under seven years. Usually the finances work out better and more in your favor to just do a reversal. Uh , the recovery is very quick. It takes about a week to recover. Uh , it’s a little rougher than your vasectomy, but not as rough as you might think. Uh , it’s done in an outpatient setting and we do put you to sleep during our vasectomy reversals. Uh, we do put do this in an operating room setting, which is safe, effective, and very comfortable for you.
Speaker 3:
That’s right. And you can wake up and get your woman pregnant. How long is the wait time before you start?
Speaker 2:
It’s a few weeks to get the sperm through there . Wake up and get your woman pregnant. Oh my Lord. Doctor .
Speaker 3:
That’s right. That’s right. Dr. Mystery, wake up and get your wife pregnant.
Speaker 2:
It’s done out of people. Get ahold of them . Yeah .
Speaker 3:
You can get your wife pregnant through calling us at (512) 238-0762 . You can send us your questions as always to Armour men’s health@gmail.com. We will answer those questions. We will ask those questions anonymously, anonymously, anonymously, and I will also respond to those. So give us a call. Thank you so much for listening and check out our free
Speaker 1:
Dr. Mystery wants to hear from you email questions to Armour men’s health@gmail.com. We’ll be right back with the armor men’s health hour.