Tubal Reversal Blog July, 2008

To the patients of the Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center message board, sorry. It has been a long time since I last posted a blog. I have worked six to seven days a week for the last eight years and sometimes 36-hour shifts in the hospital. Needless to say, many sleepless nights and long hours. Recently, I completed a six-month training period with Dr. Gary Berger while at the same time, working in the hospital and delivering babies. Before starting my new career at Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center, I took some time off to be with my family and now I am back!

It has been a long process to become a tubal ligation reversal specialist, but well worth it.

My path to become a specialist in tubal ligation reversal actually started 18 months ago when I first made contact with Dr. Berger. Six months of meetings, followed by six months of tubal ligation reversal training has gone by quite fast. This week has gone by even faster. Monday, July 21 was my first ‘official’ day with Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center. As I write this blog, this is my fourth day of surgery and we have completed 16 tubal ligation reversals thus far. So far, we have had nothing but success. All patients this week have had at least one tube opened or successfully reversed. I hope they will all become pregnant.

My first day untying tubes was wonderful, and all of the surgeries went well. Each day has been both a challenge and a joy. Dr. Berger and I are doing four reversal surgeries a day. I help him with his two patients and he helps me with my two patients. We have been working very well together and the staff at the center have been great and very accommodating.

The best thing about my new career has been the patients. The patients have been wonderful people to work with. I have the opportunity to meet patients from all over the United States and from all walks of life. They each have a unique story to tell. They have been wonderful individuals and couples who desire either more children or improvement in their menstrual symptoms. In the first three days of my new job I received more ‘Thank you Doctor….’ than I did in eight years as a general Ob/Gyn.

I think this will be the beginning of a long and lovely career…..

By Lisa D. Hourmouzis, RN
Tubal Reversal Nurse

It’s 7:30 am at Chapel Hill Surgical Center. In a moment of solitude, Dr. Gary Berger meticulously scrubs for the first surgery of the day. As he stands there quietly, I can’t help to wonder about the story behind the man in the surgical mask.

How did he become the surgeon he is today? What drives him to succeed?

These questions led to the following sit down with America’s leading tubal reversal surgeon, Dr. Gary Berger:

When did you decide to go into obstetrics and gynecology?
GB – When I was beginning my fourth year of medical school, during the time when we had to decide what direction we were going to go in, I felt like I wasn’t really secure enough in my basic medical foundation to want to jump into a specialty. So, I made the decision I would take a year of internship in internal medicine. But I had already made the decision that year to start my OB/GYN residency after the internship in medicine.

What led you to Duke?
GB – I was always a very hard worker. I guess I believed in the adage, “No pain, no gain.” So, I picked the hardest program in the US which was the medical internship at Duke University Medical Center. They had that reputation at the time. You were on-call five nights out of seven, and it was a very grueling program. But I thought I needed that to feel like I had a basic medical education before I proceeded.

Did anyone influence your decision to enter OB/GYN?
GB – I had been thinking about going into obstetrics and gynecology, and it just so happened that during that time we had a visit from Dr. Carl Tyler from the Centers for Disease Control. He was looking to recruit physicians into the EIS program, the Epidemic Intelligence Service. He came to the University of Rochester where I attended medical school and made contact with one of the pediatric professors there. I remember being on my pediatric rotation at that time.

Unbeknown to me, my pediatrics  professor had been an EIS officer; he also taught the courses in epidemiology and statistics, which I loved. Most of the other medical students weren’t so interested in them. Because I had done so well in those courses, he recommended that Dr. Tyler interview me. That was definitely a turning point in my life.

I was offered the opportunity to be in the U.S. Public Health Service at the CDC, but Dr. Tyler needed me to complete one year of my OB/GYN residency before I could join the program. That made my decision. I immediately started looking for residencies in OB/GYN.  And as it turned out, that two-year period was probably one of the most influential periods in my life. It was an absolute amazing experience.

What did you like most about obstetrics and gynecology?
GB – The thing I liked about obstetrics and gynecology was the obstetrics. I really did not think I would ever have an interest in performing surgery. In medical school, my surgical rotation was one of my least favorites.

What changed your view about surgery?
GB – During my third and fourth year of my OB/GYN residency, I had the good fortune of working closely with Dr. Jerry Hulka, the inventor of the Hulka clip. He made a big impression on me. His interests, aside from developing this technique in sterilization, were laparoscopic surgery and tubal surgery. So, it was during that time I became interested in tubal surgery; and what really solidified it was when I had the chance to see microsurgery performed. I knew at that point, that’s what I wanted to do.

Why did you decide to focus on tubal reversal surgery?
GB – My ideal was always to be able to do this surgery. I’ve done infertility treatment, IVF. I’ve done almost every type of GYN operation there is, with the exception of cancer surgery, but tubal microsurgery was always my special love. Fortunately, that’s where I am at this point.

What drives you?
GB – I think it’s a desire to be successful at whatever I do. If I’m doing tubal surgery, I want to be the best at doing tubal surgery. I want to know the most about it, have done the most and not just have the most experience, but intellectually, collected the most information. To me, that’s enjoyable because then I feel like it’s something that I’ve mastered. And of course, I like being able to help the couples that come here. I really feel that we can help most people. I know that  people are better off coming here than taking any other alternative that they have, in terms of having tubal reversal surgery.

What do you enjoy most about tubal reversal surgery?
GB – I like the challenge, the meticulousness about it. And I like being able to operate on patients and see them be comfortable and safe, and not dealing with complications.

I have a very idealistic view of things. If there’s a better way to do something, let’s find it and do it that way. I just think that’s a good way to practice medicine. But it’s not just about me personally; it has to do with everyone on our staff  who is involved in it.

Where do you hope to see tubal reversal surgery in the future?
GB – I don’t know if the pendulum will ever swing back to tubal reversal, it was there when I started 30 years ago. It was the new, exciting thing. And then IVF became the new and exciting thing.

Tubal surgery is quite different. I don’t think tubal surgery will ever suddenly become widely used or widely taught, but I think there is clearly a place for it. I like the fact that I’m training another doctor. And maybe in the future, one thing we might consider is becoming a training center where we could take physicians who are already at an advanced level like Dr. Monteith, and help them be able to do this type of surgery with expertise.

Tubal reversal helps a lot of patients, and there definitely should be the option for doctors to have additional education in it so that doctors don’t automatically send their patients into IVF programs when a simple tubal operation could be the solution.

Do you have a philosophy in your professional life?
GB – There’s an expression that I heard when I was in medical school, the quote was, “the secret in caring for the patient, is in caring for the patient.” And part of my philosophy is that I want to provide the exact type of medical care that I would want for myself, no less.

If I have to have a doctor, I want somebody who knows what they’re doing, is educated and a decent and kind person. Technically an expert, as knowledgeable about it as anyone, or more so than anybody else in the world. That’s the kind of doctor I would want for myself. Someone who will really take care of me if I have a problem and won’t brush it off or be too busy because it’s inconvenient for them. That’s the same thing that I want for my patients.

To learn more about Dr. Berger and Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center, call 919.968.4656 or contact one of our tubal reversal professionals today.

A recent discussion on the Tubal Reversal Blog was about the Ethics of Tubal Ligation. This was regarding a patient who had been sterilized when she was 24 years old and had no children. She changed her mind in her thirties and came to Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center for a reverse sterilization procedure. Her fallopian tubes had been electrocoagulated extensively and the reversal operation was a difficult one to perform, requiring tubal implantation into the uterine cavity.

One of today’s patients is a 26 year old who had a tubal ligation at age 22 and had never had children. The doctor who performed her tubal ligation first applied Falope rings to the tubes, then proceeded to burn them in several locations. In her case, tubal reversal was not possible at all. During her operation, I wondered why any doctor would perform such a destructive type of tubal ligation for a young woman with no children. The Falope ring alone would have been sufficient to prevent pregnancy, yet allow reversal at a later time if she changed her mind about having children. Fortunately, she has the option of treatment by IVF. Still, why would a doctor perform an operation that essentially destroyed the tubes in such a young woman when there are a variety of other less destructive procedures for performing a tubal ligation? Is this ethical medical treatment?

I am very interested in what others think about this issue. Please leave your comments!!

More about Tubal Ligation Ethics

Submitted by Gary S. Berger, M.D.

We periodically write case reports on patients who undergo tubal ligation reversal at Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center. The patient we will profile today had a ligation reversal procedure at our center last month.

She and her husband traveled to Chapel Hill from West Virginia. She is 34 years old and previously was an in-vitro fertilization (IVF) nurse. She is the mother of two children (ages 5 and 2). Her husband works as an engineer and is the father of both of their children. She had a tubal ligation after her second child because of two difficult, high-risk pregnancies.

Her first pregnancy was a vaginal birth complicated by heavy post-partum bleeding. Her heavy bleeding required a dilation and curettage (D and C) and emergency abdominal surgery to control the blood loss. She was diagnosed as having a placenta accreta. This is a condition where the placenta has invaded into the uterus too deeply and does not separate normally from the uterus at the time of delivery. She recovered from this surgery and eventually had a second pregnancy. This child was delivered by C-section and she had a Pomeroy tubal ligation done during the C-section. The operative report described tying and cutting the tubes as well as burning the ends. The pathology report described 1.5 cm tubal segments as being removed.

She explained to us, “My decision to have a tubal ligation was not done prayerfully but was more of a medically made decision.” She and her husband now desire more children in their life, and they traveled to Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center to have her tubal ligation reversed.

We were concerned that her doctor described in the operative report the tubal cauterization (burning) after tying and cutting the tubes. Since the mention of the cauterization was vague (we had no idea if a small segment was burned or the entire tube was burned) we discussed starting with a screening laparoscopy. Our patient was able to talk to her doctor who performed the tubal ligation. The doctor assured her only the ends of the tubes were burned. Since this can be a common practice and seemed minimal, the decision was made to proceed with ligation reversal without starting with a screening laparoscopy.

During her operation we found the right fallopian tube was abnormal. The right tube was long and healthy appearing, but there was no fimbriated end of the tube. This area is one of the most critical areas of the tube. The fimbriated ends act like millions of small fingers, which pick up the egg and direct the egg down the tube. The repair of this tube would require a more difficult microsurgical salpingostomy and creation of a ‘neo-fimbriated’ end of tube.

A microsurgical salpingosotomy was performed on her right tube. The left side was more normal- we had two tubal segments that we repaired with the usual anastomosis procedure. The entire operation was about one hour and fifteen minutes.

The story of this patient illustrates several important concepts:

1. She was a knowledgeable medical professional. She understood what it meant to have a tubal ligation. Many patients of all walks of life will have changes of heart as their lives change. Even medical professionals will make health care decisions for themselves, which later turn out to not be right for them. None of us can predict the future.

2. She was an IVF nurse and was aware of the pros and cons of tubal ligation reversal vs IVF. She and her husband decided ligation reversal was a more appropriate path for them.

3. Operative and pathology reports provide helpful information in planning for tubal repair, but they can sometimes be misleading.

4. The right tube was very difficult to repair. Often we will question ourselves as to whether a difficult tube should be repaired or should we just focus on the ‘better’ tube. We can never predict with 100% certain what will or will not work to help get a patient pregnant, so we like to give all patients the benefit of the doubt and try at all costs to open all the tubes we operate on.

We wish her and her husband a successful outcome of her tubal reversal operation and hope their prayerful decision will be soon rewarded.

Submitted by Dr. Charles Monteith