In order to have a thoughtful conversation about the IVF expert’s facts on tubal reversal surgery it is important to understand some basic concepts.
What is a fact and what is an opinion?
I currently have two daughters…one in second grade and another in kindergarten and I have been helping them with their homework. The education of today’s kids begins very early and they are taught how to distinguish between truth and fiction and fact and opinion at a very early age.
As a result helping them with their homework, I am currently very knowledgeable about the definition of a fact and an opinion and I have become adept at distinguishing between the two.
Facts And Opinions On Reversing Tubes
To review what most of us learned in elementary school, a fact is something that can be proven. It is usually true and can be measured and quantified. An opinion is something that is a belief or judgment or personal view or attitude.
When I started working with my second grader, I was a little intimidated at first because some of these can be very tricky but after awhile I got the hang of it and it became pretty easy to distinguish between the two.
First Tubal Reversal ‘Fact’
In the previous article, So Called “Facts” About Tubal Ligation Reversal Surgery, I shared 8 tubal reversal ‘facts’ published by an infertility expert about tubal reversal. The items on the list were called facts but they really were heavily biased opinions meant to persuade women to not get tubal reversal.
The first item on the IVF experts list of ‘facts’ was:
Be wary of tubal reversal success rates.
This is not a fact. It is, more appropriately, a statement that reflects an opinion, because an opinion is something that is a belief or personal view.
The above statement is an opinion and it is a correct opinion. Any patient with any serious medical condition needs to be wary about any physicians self-reported and unsubstantiated statements about treatment success. This is especially true when it comes to cancer, weight loss, anti-aging, and infertility treatments. The above statement is equally true when discussing IVF success rates as well as tubal reversal success rates.
Is Tubal Reversal Successful?
Tubal reversal can be very successful. You can look at our Pregnancy Statistics and see what our patients have reported to us after their tubal reversal surgeries at our center. Tubal reversal does work, but tubal reversal is not 100% successful. Nothing in life is 100% and you should be wary of any person who tries to convince you otherwise. On the other hand tubal reversal is not 0% successful either. It may be 100% or 0% successful for a specific individual but, in general, about 70% of all our patients will report pregnancy after tubal ligation reversal.
Tubal Reversal Success: Definition?
Tubal reversal success can be defined as having a positive pregnancy test but most patients want a baby and for them this is the ultimate measure of success. We also provide detailed statistics on our website about the outcomes of pregnancy after tubal reversal surgery.
What Do Our Numbers Really Mean?
We can repair at least one tube in 98% of all our patients and both tubes in over 90% of these women. This means we cannot repair tubes in only 2% of patients who come to our center. Of all the patients who have their tubes repaired approximately 66% will report a positive pregnancy test. Of those who report pregnancy, approximately 50% will give birth, 35-40% will report miscarriage, and 10-15% will report ectopic pregnancy.
This data is reliable for 12 months after tubal reversal surgery. It is very possible that with more time the numbers could be more favorable because some women may need more time to get pregnant. We follow patients actively for a year after reversal surgery and we count on our patients to self report tubal reversal pregnancies after this 12 month time frame.
We recently published two articles about the practical understanding of both tubal reversal success and IVF success.
Being wary about tubal reversal success is not a fact, but, rather, a statement of an opinion. I think this a very fair opinion when considering the success rate of any medical treatment.
The next article in this series discusses the IVF expert’s biased tubal reversal fact #2 :
Is Tubal Reversal Surgery Major Surgery?
Submitted by Dr. Charles Monteith
