What Factors Affect Tubal Reversal Success
Knowing about tubal reversal success is probably a key piece of information you are wanting to know. That is, if you have decided you want another child and to get your tubes untied. If you are wanting to do it for relief of post tubal ligation syndrome problems, then maybe the tubal reversal pregnancy success rates aren’t quite as important.
So if you are one of those wanting to know about tubal reversal success, you will probably want to also know what success depends upon. A successful outcome depends upon three basic things. These are the method of tubal ligation, your age and the length of the fallopian tubes left after the surgery which, of course, depends upon what happened in your tubal ligation in the first place.
We will use the ready supply of statistics from the Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center website as our source. We use them as they are the only publicly published statistics I have seen so far. But you need to know up front that these statistics come from a highly experienced surgeon unlike your local doctor who may have done two reversal surgeries in the last three years.
Let’s begin with the tubal ligation method used and its affect upon success. In order from best to worse are: rings or clips, ligation/resection, coagulation/cautery, and then fimbriectomy. It’s not unknown for a doctor to use more than one method or to be fairly brutal with the method used such as burning the tubes all along their length. For the rings/clips, you have 76% chance of becoming pregnant. With the fimbriectomy, it goes down to 56%. But that is still a better shot than one course of IVF in most cases.
With age, you should see that the older you are, the less your chances of successfully getting pregnant. The statistics from the website bear this out. Patients under 30 when they had their tubal reversal have shown an 82% pregnancy rate while women over 40 have only a 41% chance. Bear in mind, however, that the over 40 statistic contains at least two women who were in their 50s when they had a tubal reversal done.
When viewing the length of your fallopian tubes, it comes down to the longer the better. If your tubes are at least 7 and 1/2 cm long after reversal surgery, then your chances of pregnancy are 80%. However, a woman that only has 2 and 1/2 cm or less to work with only has a 38% shot at success.
However, you should realize that becoming pregnant and staying that way are two different things. Also of note is that you have a 10% greater chance of having an ectopic pregnancy after having a tubal reversal. If you check out the statistics on this page, http://news.tubal-reversal.net/pregnancy-study-2007-pregnancy_outcomes.htm, you will be able to see how getting pregnant translated to actually having a child.
Hopefully this article will answer some of the questions you have about tubal reversal success. Just check out our resources below to look over the information for yourself.
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