New Study Documents Success of Tubal Ligation Reversal

Many people, including doctors, mistakenly believe that tubal ligation surgery is permanent. A one hour outpatient operation, however, can rejoin the separated segments of fallopian tube so that pregnancy can occur again. Results of a 6 year study of 3,139 women who had tubal reversal surgery show that 69% of the women became pregnant during the study interval (2001-2006). This is the largest and most definitive study in existence providing information on the outcome of tubal ligation reversal.

The recently published Tubal Reversal Pregnancy Study Report 2007 shows that pregnancy rates after surgery ranged from 82% for women under 30 to 41% for women 40 years of age and older. The highest pregnancy rate (87%) was reported by women age 29 or less who underwent reversal of a previous ring or clip method of sterilization.

Tubal segment length measurements were taken during the reversal operations. Women with tubal lengths of 7.5 cm or longer had a pregnancy rate of 80%. The pregnancy rate declined as tubal length decreased, but even women with the shortest tubes (less than 2.5 cm) became pregnant (38%). Although previously unreported in the medical literature, it was discovered during this study that a repaired fallopian tube of any length can result in pregnancy.

One conclusion from this study was that for women who have undergone a tubal ligation procedure and decide later they would like to have more children, tubal reversal surgery is a better option than the alternative treatment of in vitro fertilization (IVF). “The results are clear – across all ages of women included, tubal reversal surgery led to higher numbers of pregnancies and live births than standard IVF procedures. Besides having higher success rates, the one-hour outpatient procedure is less than half the cost of an IVF cycle.” said the study’s author, Dr. Gary Berger.