Women have a vast choice of birth control, with everything from pills to patches readily available to protect female sexual health and wellness. For the guys, however, the vasectomy is the closest thing modern medicine has come to an effective birth control option – condoms aside. When you have a vasectomy, it’s like a woman getting a lifetime supply of birth control pills – without putting her wellbeing at risk to side effects – or having her tubes tied, which is a much more complicated procedure than a vasectomy. The procedure is simple but somewhat permanent – unless, of course, you choose to have it reversed.
When you have a vasectomy, your surgeons will cut the vas deferens, which are the two tubes that transport sperm from your testicles to your penis. Two quick slices mean you’re sperm-free and in permanent safety from unwanted pregnancies. However, nothing is ever really permanent in this world, including some men’s resolve to not have children. Some men do opt to reverse their vasectomies, which is accomplished through a procedure known as a vasovasostomy. This is nothing new; vasovasostomies have been around for more than 100 years, with the first successful operation reported in 1919. These days, the procedure is ten-a-penny, with 30,000 previosuly-snipped men in the US having one every year.
The reasons to reverse your vasectomy will vary depending on the man, but often a remarriage, improvement in financial situation or death of a child is involved. On very rare occasions, a doctor might perform a vasovasostomy if complications of a vasectomy have left you in a lot of pain. Regardless of your reasons, reversal is definitely a tempting option, but it’s important to note that a vasovasostomy isn’t just a fall-back option for whenever you change your mind. The reversal procedure is not always successful, as your body may have ceased to recognise its own sperm and, as a result, developed antibodies to it. This drastically lowers your chances of impregnating your partner, even if you have a vasovasostomy.
One factor involved in the effectiveness of your vasovasostomy will be how long you wait to change your mind. Even if your doctor does manage to successfully reverse your procedure, your odds of getting your partner pregnant will still be lower than they were before you originally had the snip, and the time it takes for you to have a vasovasostomy will have an impact on these odds. If you choose to have a vasovasostomy three years after you originally had a vasectomy, for example, there’s a 97% chance that your doctor will be able to successfully reopen your vas deferens, but the likelihood of you impregnating your partner will stand at 76% – and this is the best-case scenario. The longer you wait to have your vasectomy reversed, the less of a chance that the vasovasostomy will work. If you were to wait 15 years, your chance of rebuilding your vas deferens will be 71% and of actually getting your partner pregnant will be a mere 30%.
You won’t be surprised to hear that “uncutting” your vas deferens is not as simple or straightforward as cutting it was. The average vasectomy takes about 20 minutes to complete, but a reversal of the procedure can take anywhere from two to four hours. While you don’t need an overnight stay in hospital for either procedure, with a vasovasostomy you should take the entire day off and expect to be in the hospital for at least six hours. Recovery then takes approximately a month, with you going back to work within three to seven days but refraining from sex for the full month.