Permanent Birth Control Without Surgery, Regarding Women, Spring 2005
Permanent Birth Control Without Surgery
Women who want permanent birth control but not the surgery have an incision-free option.
It is called Essure and takes 30 minutes to perform. Most women are able to go home 45 minutes after completing the procedure. Women can resume their normal activities in 24 hours or less, compared with the four to six days to recover from laparoscopic surgery.
“This is a very good option for women who do not want the inconvenience of a surgical procedure,” says Dr. Nady E. Nady, Chief of Gynecological Surgery at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and Assistant Professor of OB/GYN at UMDNJ–Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
Before Essure, women who wanted permanent contraception had only one option, a tubal ligation, which requires an abdominal incision and the cutting or burning of the fallopian tubes. Tubal ligation is the most common form of contraception in the United States.
The Essure method uses a small, flexible device inserted into each of the fallopian tubes using a transcervical catheter done with a non-invasive hysteroscope. Once in place, body tissue grows into the inserts, blocking the fallopian tubes and preventing sperm from reaching the eggs. The process takes about three months and during that time women need to use birth control. A follow-up visit with a doctor offers the assurance that the tubes are completely blocked and a woman can rely on Essure for contraception. So far, 27,000 women have undergone the procedure with no pregnancies.
The Essure procedure can’t be performed immediately after delivery but it can be done six to eight weeks later. To learn more about Essure, Dr. Nady can be reached at (732) 235-6631.
The editorial content for this article was taken from the print version of Regarding Women. Click here to sign up for future editions of Regarding Women.
Email this link
Print this page