is there something wrong with getting a tubal??

[sweetpea333]

i thought i remembered some controversy about getting a tubal done... maybe im wrong though... but if there is something wrong with it... im curious... and clueless..

[MoonStarFalling]

Check out tubal.org, my best friend got post tubal ligation syndrome not fun.

[angington]

If dh and I were going the surgical route for birth control, no way would I get a tubal when a vasectomy is a simpler, easy to recover from procedure.

[zinemama]

Yeah, why go through major surgery when your partner can take care of things with a simple, outpatient procedure?

[Full Heart]

Vesectomies are no fun either. Check out dontfixit.org

Don't know about tubals. I wouldn't get one cause I figure that I am taking something that works and making it not work anymore so there has to be health consequences from doing that. But I have never looked into the medical stuff.

[zinemama]

Hmm...I'd have to say that the vasectomy I know of has made things MORE fun...

[sweetpea333]

i had a tubal with my last c section.. i wasnt able to have a natural birth due to a very mishaped pelvis so i was already in surgery i didnt even notice a difference from my first c section.. i didnt put to much thought into it when i planned it or i didnt do any research on it.. which i probably should have..

[courtenay_e]

Well, this is anecdotal, but I know two women, both of them nurses on an L&D unit I frequent (I'm a doula), who got pregnant after a tubal ligation. Of course there's another who got pregnant after her husband had a vasectomy who works with them. They were all pregnant at the same time with their oops'...and their procedures were done years apart!

[JBaxter]

I have a L&D nurse friend who said tubals done at the time of birth have a much higher failure rate. She was going to try to find the journal she read that in.

[lorijds]

I LOVE MY TUBAL!!! Wooohooo tubal!

Seriously, I haven't had any problems. I was the one who never ever wanted to be pregnant again, so I figured I was the one to have the procedure. Plus dh has some chronic health issues--asthma and allergies--and I don't, so that was another deciding factor. I was of the mindset--if I die, he remarries and wants to have kids, cool. If he dies and I hook up with someone else, I STILL don't want to have any more pregnancies. So the tubal was the best decision for us.

To each their own; you should definately view it as permanent, not something that might be reversible. Be comfortable with not ever having any more babies. Ever.

[studentmidwife]

I heard that it causes hormonal problems because it cuts off the blood supply to the ovaries, so a lot of women who get tubals end up needing hysterectomies within 5 years. I can't remember where I read that though, and I haven't done much research myself.

[NaomiLorelie]

Originally Posted by studentmidwife

I heard that it causes hormonal problems because it cuts off the blood supply to the ovaries, so a lot of women who get tubals end up needing hysterectomies within 5 years. I can't remember where I read that though, and I haven't done much research myself.

I've heard that too. There was a woman on these boards that posted in TAO about the premature menapause she was suffering due to blood being cut off to her ovaries during a tubal.

[sweetpea333]

awww!! how often does a tubal fail??

[lorijds]

Originally Posted by studentmidwife

I heard that it causes hormonal problems because it cuts off the blood supply to the ovaries, so a lot of women who get tubals end up needing hysterectomies within 5 years. I can't remember where I read that though, and I haven't done much research myself.

That doesn't really make sense to me. In my experience they don't cut the blood supply to the ovaries in order to sever the fallopean tubes. The blood supply to the fallopian tubes runs from the ovarian artery through the ovary then to the fallopians. And the supply to the fallopian tubes shouldn't be cut, I would think, in a routine tubal; rather, the tube is usually clamped or severed and cauterized in one spot--they don't cut the supply to it uness they are going to remove it. If they cut the blood supply, but then left the tube in, then you would have a fairly large piece of necrotic tissue in your abdomen, leading to infection. No, since they leave the tubes in place, just cut, they would want a healthy blood supply to feed them.

It could be that when surgeries were more primative and a bigger deal many decades ago, they temporarily suspended the blood supply to the ovary in order to remove the fallopian tubes. Or maybe before the technology that enables laproscopic surgeries, there was more damage to surrounding structures, including the ovarian arteries, just because the instruments and lighting were more primative and less precise. I don't believe that is the case for routine tubals now. Of course with any surgery there is always the risk of damage to surrounding structures; but it's not a routine occurance.

I've seen a couple of tubals, and I don't remember severing any vessels. The surgeon went in laproscopically, put this permanent clamp thing around each tube, and that was that. The surrounding tissues remained pink and healthy, and there was actually very little blood in the entire process, I'd say less than 5ccs per fallopian tube. Each doc has their own method, I'm sure, as well as their own skill level, but the doc I observed didn't appear to ever (intentionally or not) sever the fallopian tube blood supply.

Here's a diagram of the blood vessel structure to the uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes. Pretty cool, huh!

http://education.yahoo.com/reference...figure?id=1170

I hope that helps with some clarification. I'm sure that some women do need hysterectomies after tubals; and in most cases, the two don't have anything to do with each other. I think sometimes we forget or discount that our bodies continually change in response to age, diet, body weight, physical and emotional stress, disease, etc; all these things affect our menstrual cycle health, and can cause problems at any time during our lives. It's obvious and reasonable to blame a surgical procedure, but until a couple of large scale studies link the tubal with long term health problems, I think it is a little too simplistic to place the blame on it when there are so many other factors that can cause these same problems.

[sevenkids]

Originally Posted by lorijds

I LOVE MY TUBAL!!! Wooohooo tubal!

Seriously, I haven't had any problems. I was the one who never ever wanted to be pregnant again, so I figured I was the one to have the procedure. Plus dh has some chronic health issues--asthma and allergies--and I don't, so that was another deciding factor. I was of the mindset--if I die, he remarries and wants to have kids, cool. If he dies and I hook up with someone else, I STILL don't want to have any more pregnancies. So the tubal was the best decision for us.

To each their own; you should definately view it as permanent, not something that might be reversible. Be comfortable with not ever having any more babies. Ever.

That's how I felt about mine, I was the one who was sure I didn't want any more kids, no matter what happened in my life. It was a bit uncomfortable for a few days after, but so far I haven't had any problems with it. My periods have actually become less bothersome since. My husband and I have split up, and I'm still sure I don't want any more kids, but he might one day. So, in retrospect, I'm glad he still has the ability to pro-create if he wants to, (even though I'd like to cut his balls off myself right about now) and I'm glad I still won't have to worry about birth control.

[sanguine_speed]

We are BOTH getting sterilized when the time comes. When we're done, we're done.

[bri276]

I'd really like to know if those risks are real because I have a chromosome disorder and CANNOT have any more biological children without ART. I'm not interested though; I'd much rather adopt if we ever decide to add to our family, which we don't think we will anyways. But- DH's sperm is perfectly fine, and if for some bizarre reason we decided to try for another one of his bio kids, I could use an egg donor...blah blah complicated. Point being, my eggs will never be used to create another child, and if I wasn't too scared of complications I'd seriously consider a tubal.
What's the failure rate? can you really have sex without protection afterwards?

[michaelasmommy]

My concern would be wanting children later. My friend got one when she was married to her first husband, thinking that she was done having children. She later got remarried to a man who had no children of his own, and she really regretted doing it. They are now trying to get it reversed, which costs a lot of money and her insurance doesn't cover the reversal, only the initial procedure was covered. Just something to think about.

[roslyn]

I'm 42 and this is my second (and last) pregnancy. I will have to have a c-section, so it makes more sense for me to go ahead and have the tubal. If I wasn't having another child, dh would've had a vasectomy. I don't really have any concerns about a tubal, though I will check out the website.

[stewie]

[QUOTE=Full Heart;6205761]Vesectomies are no fun either. Check out dontfixit.org [QUOTE]


I personally wouldn't put too much faith in that site. It's main purpose is to sell the authors two self published books. It's deliberately sensationalist, as what usually happens after a vasectomy doesn't make interesting reading or sells books.

In order to make a case, he's taken various medical quotes, and used them in the book / site. What he's done in most cases is to take them completely out of context by changing the wording, omitting parts (or complete) sentences, inserting sentences or words that are not in the original and in some cases making the whole thing up and attributing it to a study.

www.dontfixit.info has a comparison of the original quotes against the books version, and looks at what is supposed to be "Evidence".


Typical quotation:-

"Numerous studies over more than 30 years have shown correlations between vasectomy and increased incidence of many diseases. The list of the diseases studied for links includes prostate cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, erectile dysfunction, chronic testicular pain, chronic inflammation, epididymitis, Prostatitis, testicular cancer, and autoimmune orchitis".

This quote is attributed to Complications of vasectomy. Raspa RF. Am Fam Physician. 1993 Nov 15;48(7):1264-8.

He claims that Raspa says that all of these problems are associated with vasectomy. The study is looking at complications of vasectomy, and he's removed part of the sentence that states that these connections have been stuidied, but "not substantiated by clinical studies". Raspa concludes that "Compared with tubal ligation, vasectomy has fewer serious complications and a comparable failure rate."

What he's done is to change a medical quote that states that associations have not been substantiated by clinical studies, to they most certainly have!
That's the pattern for the whole site - finding anything not altered is nigh on impossible!

The other point to bear in mind is who links to that site. In the main it's catholic sites, or sites that support natural family planning (not using birth control). They rather have the tendency to not base an argument on the facts of the matter but to try and scare men out of having a vasectomy with that sort of site.

OK, in some cases it works, but in most cases people are not that stupid, and see past the technique. So are you going to base a decision on information made up to sell a sensationalist book?