About two to three months later, the patient returns to the clinic. We take a sample of semen to check the sperm count. That tells us whether his vasectomy was successful. If any sperm are in the ejaculate, we might need to do a second one, but that happens in fewer than 1% of cases. Most of the time, we can give the patient the all-clear that their procedure is complete.

Of course, this is a surgery, so patients naturally have significant questions and concerns. A common one I’ll hear from a patient is that getting a vasectomy will make him “less of a man” because he is no longer able to father children. But that is absolutely not true. It won’t make you less of a man.

Some men fear it will damage their penis because the procedure is so close to it. But a vasectomy will not damage a man’s penis or any other surrounding structures. And he will not have any changes in sexual function or enjoyment after recovery from the procedure.

While everything else is the same as before, ejaculate volume obviously decreases slightly after a vasectomy. This worries some men. But it’s not a noticeable decrease, since sperm is only 5% of semen volume.

If patients do change their minds, however, they can get their vasectomies reversed, and about 5% of U.S. patients do.

Most commonly this involves a man with a new partner who wants to have biological kids. Nearly all vasectomy reversals succeed, with sperm returning to the ejaculate 90% to 95% of the time. And pregnancies follow vasectomy reversals about 50% to 60% of the time, depending on the age of the woman.

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Ranjith Ramasamy, Associate Professor of Urology, University of Miami

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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