I have done over a thousand vasectomies and to my knowledge have not seen this syndrome in my practice.
Having said that, I do believe this malady does exist. But here is the thing, when a patient has a vasectomy reversal to alleviate the pain, it may not be the reversal per se that makes the pain go away.
I recently did a vasectomy reversal on a patient that wanted the procedure to have another child. He did, however, mention that he was told that clips were used for his vasectomy and that he had had pain in the right testicle since the procedure. At the time of the reversal on the right side I found a sperm granuloma (an inflammatory mass in the area of the vasectomy as a result of the body’s attempt to correct the trauma of the surgery and response to sperm which the body views as a foreign body) and marked surrounding inflammatory changes. There were clips noted and dissecting the granuloma out, cleaning the two ends of the vas and removing the “inflammatory glob” was more difficult than the usual dissection. So at the end of the reversal on the right side the patient had the granuloma removed and pristine ends of the vas reconnected with microscopic suture.
It is too early to say if the reversal in terms of pregnancy and patency was successful. But what if his right testicular pain goes away? Maybe it is the removal of the sperm granuloma and not reconstituting the vas. In other words a vasectomy reversal done of post vasectomy pain syndrome that is successful, might have been because of removing the scar tissue and not the reversal.
I had a reversal patient several months ago tell me as he was leaving our surgery center that the primary reason for having the reversal was for pain and not children. He failed to tell me that preoperatively and if he had I would have discouraged having a reversal for that purpose alone. (Surgeon’s rule number one: Don’t operate on folks for pain.) As it turned out, he wrote me a note complimenting my staff at our surgery center and that he was very pleased with the results, i.e. no more pain not that there was a pregnancy.
In summary, there may be something to having a reversal to alleviate chronic post vasectomy pain but it may have more to do with removing the sperm granuloma and inflammatory tissue than restoring the flow of sperm.
Vasectomy Reversal
