Tubal Reversal Blog ‘patient follow-up’

Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center is the only medical facility specifically for tubal ligation reversal surgery. We provide the most detailed and accurate information about tubal reversal available from any doctor, hospital, or medical institution. Let me explain how we are able to do this.

Electronic Patient Database

Keeping track of patients following surgery makes excellent sense from a clinical point of view. Continuing follow-up after surgery helps ensure the best care for each patient and allows us to evaluate the success of tubal reversal surgery and the care we provide. Setting up and maintaining a system to ensure ongoing follow-up is not usually found in a private medical practice since this is costly and time-consuming and requires staff knowledgeable in database management. Regardless of the cost and time requirement, Dr. Berger has made it a priority because of his commitment to giving patients all of the information they should have in order to make an informed decision about tubal reversal surgery.

At Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center, we have a computer system where every nurse enters patient information before, during, and after their surgery. In fact, all 11 of our nurses contact patients, record data, and make daily entries into computerized records. With this follow-up information, we can analyze and report accurate statistical data about the long-term outcomes of tubal reversal procedures performed here.

Information Sources

The patient follow-up system consists of information collected in many different ways and includes a minimum of 6 calls or e-mails to the patient in the first year following surgery.

1. Post-operative nurse visit the morning after surgery
2. Telephone follow-up on the second or third postoperative day
4. E-mail questionnaire at two weeks
6. Telephone contact at 12 months

Other information is collected and recorded any time we communicate with patients post-operatively. These contacts are usually initiated by patients to report pregnancies and the outcomes of pregnancies. When patients report new pregnancies, we request that they complete a Pregnancy Report Form. Each week, we summarize the new pregnancy results in the Weekly Pregnancy Report Forum of the Tubal Reversal Message Board and also give more details in the New Pregnancy Announcements.

Summary

After reading our information and statistics and comparing it to what might be available from other doctors, we believe patients will recognize that Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center is the only facility where accuracy of information is considered to be a priority and sharing it with prospective patients is considered to be a necessity. Providing facts rather than offering misleading or speculative statements about tubal reversal success is one mission of our practice. We believe this is the right thing to do.

I hope this information is helpful to you as you consider whether tubal reversal surgery is right for you, and if so, why it is in your best interests to have it performed at Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center.

Submitted by Julia Smith RN
Nurse Administrator
Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center
919-656-8204

Our Tubal Reversal Center is Unique

Dr. Berger is the only physician in the country with a practice that is specifically limited to tubal reversal surgery. That is the only procedure performed here with Dr. Berger performing four reversals each day, five days a week. We have a high staff/patient ratio with one or two nurses devoted specifically to your care while you are here. All of our nurses have advanced certification in cardiac life support (ACLS) and our anesthesiologists are MDs with board certification in anesthesiology. The anesthesiologists are employees here and not anesthesia staff from another hospital or anesthesia service. In other words, everyone at Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center has expertise in caring for tubal reversal patients and performing reversal surgery. While you are here, you will only be with other women and couples who are here specifically for the same purpose.

We Provide Accurate Tubal Reversal Statistics

We keep detailed data and statistics on each of our patients (such as age, tube length, medical history, tube of tubal ligation, pregnancy history). This is obtained by ongoing contact with our patients to ensure we have accurate information regarding their surgery and their outcome. Dr. Berger maintains and publishes data regarding pregnancy rates and pregnancy outcomes following tubal reversal surgery. We know of no other doctor or medical facility that does this.

On the Internet, claims about tubal reversal pregnancy rates are often made without supporting information or documentation – such as a description of the patient population, study method, and follow-up interval. Most Internet sites about tubal reversal do not provide any factual data at all. Any doctor may say that his patients have a particular success rate, but supporting the claim with actual data involves considerable effort. Performing a follow-up study such as this one requires keeping an accurate record of patients and their findings, as well as maintaining ongoing patient contact to determine the outcomes of treatment. That is the only way a doctor can actually know what the pregnancy and outcome statistics are for his patients. Without this detailed type of information, the accuracy of any claim of success rates should be questioned.

At Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center, nurses enter information into an electronic patient database at the patient’s registration, the surgical procedure, and from regular post-operative communications with our staff. If we have not heard from patients after their recovery from surgery, our nurses contact them at 6 and 12-month intervals. We know of no other doctor, hospital, or clinic that maintains such ongoing patient follow-up records after tubal reversal surgeries. I believe Dr. Berger’s commitment to providing accurate, up-to-date data is reflected in the fact that he requires this time-consuming but important procedure to be followed so that valid information can be obtained. Each year we publish the results of our follow-up study, reflecting surgical and pregnancy outcomes. This is the most comprehensive study done to date of tubal reversal surgery and its resulting outcomes, showing that for the majority of 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 in vitro fertilization (IVF).

We Follow-up With Patients and Are Always Available

Another reason to choose Dr. Berger and Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center is the staff! We are available 24 hours a day/7 days a week to answer questions and concerns. Patients regularly express amazement at the level of care, compassion, and professionalism that they were shown before, during, and after surgery. Patients also like the fact that they receive follow-up calls on post-op day 1 and 3 and at 2 weeks, simply to see how they were doing and to have any questions answered. Our nurses follow-up with each patient again at 6 months and one year after surgery.

Submitted by Julia Smith, R.N.
Nurse Administrator