Low Cost Vasectomy Reversal Tips

Can You Find a Low Cost Vasectomy Reversal?

Maybe you are one of the 4-6% of men who have had a vasectomy and now want to reverse that decision. You have been looking around and are in shock at the costs of the vasectomy reversal surgery. You just want to find a decent low cost vasectomy reversal. How do you do this?

Vasectomy reversals can range from about $4000 to $20,000. The average cost in the US is about $10,000. Ouch! As you may know, the chances of your insurance paying for this, what they consider elective surgery, are almost nil. You can read our article about vasectomy reversal financing but your biggest concern now is getting one for the least cost. After all, who wouldn’t want an affordable vasectomy reversal?

We are not going to try to fool you. Researching this topic, we found at least one urologist that was offering the surgery for $3750. What you need to understand is the cost you are quoted at such a low fee usually only includes the surgeon’s fee. There are at least two other fees you need to be concerned with as well.  It will be up to you to be sure just what costs and fees are included with any low cost vasectomy reversal you find.

Be On the Look Out for Other Costs in a Low Cost Vasectomy Reversal

These two other fees are the anesthesiologist’s fee and the hospital fees.

There are ways to minimize these fees. You can have a regional anesthetic given as opposed to a general or light general anesthesia. You could have the procedure done in the doctor’s office using macroscopic techniques to lower the costs.

However, given the delicacy of this reversal procedure, you might want to think twice about being given so little anesthesia that you can still move around during the operation. The tubes within the vas deferentia that must be joined again are only 0.2mm in diameter. In other words, it’s very small. Do you want to move at the wrong time? You really need a surgeon who has been trained in microsurgery as this will be your best bet for a successful reversal.

Make sure you know all the hospital costs for your stay under any types of conditions. Be aware of your room costs, food costs and pain medications.

If you have this done on an out-patient basis but had to travel to your low cost doctor, add in your travel and hotel fees as well. And if the procedure is done at the doctor’s office, you might want to find out just what type of “office” he has. Does it include a state of the art surgical room with all the appropriate equipment or a just a table with a set of optical loupes (being a bit extreme here but trying to get a point across).

With the above information, do you really want the urologist doing the job to use some type of magnifying glasses (optical loupes)? Or would you rather have the vasectomy reversal done with a surgical microscope under controlled conditions? Those are some mighty small sutures the doctor needs to use to put things back together.  However, your surgeon may be extremely skilled and experienced with a high rate of success using optical loupes.  Know your surgeon’s vasectomy reversal success rate.

Yet More Factors to Consider When Looking at a Low Cost Vasectomy Reversal

Another factor which adds to the cost is the education and experience of the surgeon. The more skilled the physician, usually the more he will charge.

Now you can find some doctors who will advertise a very low cost vasectomy reversal, but you need to know why they can afford to offer such low prices.How do they offer what may seem like an affordable vasectomy reversal? Perhaps you have been lucky enough to find a clinic that specializes in vasectomy reversals and has been able to negotiate lower costs due to this specialization.

Lastly, you need to know what the cost will be in addition if the doctor finds during the surgery (which is usually when he discovers this need) that he must conduct a vas to epididymis procedure. Some include this in the quoted cost and some surgeons will add to the cost if this type of vasectomy reversal is required instead. This could take your potential low cost vasectomy reversal and make it much higher priced than you expected.