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Last Updated:
Jan 3rd, 2010 - 00:09:53
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Question
My husband is 31 years old and had a vasectomy done in Savannah, Georgia on Jan. 12,2007. Two days later, I had to rush him to the emergency room because he was completely black and blue and the size of a softball. The E.R. doctors sent him for an ultrasound and found that his left testicle was just a piece of dead meat. They couldn't do anything because the surgery was done in Savannah, so they transferred him to Memorial Medical University Hospital in Savannah. On Jan. 15,2007 at 3:50 am, my husband was taken into surgery to have his left testicle removed. After waking up in recovery he was released.
Two weeks after having his left testicle removed, he developed a surgical infection. This has been on horrible year so far, because we are still going through more and more. Last month he was sent to MCG in Augusta Georgia to see a specialist there. The specialist found that his right testicle was sewn to his scrotal sack. July 2, 2007 my husband underwent another surgery. . . this time to release his right testicle from the sack. He went for a checkup last Friday, and the doctor said that he was healing up nicely, but there was still a chance of him loosing the right one too.
My question is . . . Is this normal procedure for a vasectomy?
Andrea
Answer
Andrea relates the tragic story of her husband having significant post-operative complications from a vasectomy. He had bleeding from the procedure that resulted in a softball-sized collection of blood on the left side. This necessitated an exploration under anesthesia during which removal of the left testis was done, this too being complicated by an infection two weeks later. Furthermore the vasectomy on the right side caused the testis to adhere to the skin and impaired its mobility, also necessitating yet another surgery to free these adhesions. She asks the rhetorical question: “Is this normal for a vasectomy”? The answer is of course “no”.
As most of you know I have never done vasectomies because I believe sterilization a violation of God’s plan for marital love. It injures a healthy part of the body and interferes with the great gift of fertility. That being said, my first urologic partner had no such qualms and did approximately 5000 vasectomies in the course of his career. Never once did he have a complication even remotely related to the above. There are many websites devoted to a discussion of vasectomy. If one is curious regarding the whole gamut of potential complications I would review a reputable source there, e.g., something published by the National Institutes of Health (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002995.htm).
Gregory Polito, MD, KM, is President of the California Association of Natural Family Planning.
Dr. Polito is a urologist in private practice with vasovasostomy (vasectomy reversal) as a subspecialty.
He is a Member of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, and Chair of Board Quality Committee at Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital in Whittier, CA.
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to visit Dr. Polito's web site.
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