Tubal Surgery

Tubal surgery specialist

What is tubal surgery?

Tubal surgery is used to remove scar tissue on your fallopian tubes or to correct tubal damage that may affect your chances of success with other treatment. This sort of damage can be diagnosed with a laparascopy – a type of keyhole surgery using a very small microscope that lets your doctor check for tubal patency (that your tubes are open) and other conditions.

Dr Iris Wang is a highly trained and experienced tubal surgery specialist. Although tubal surgery is becoming a less common treatment method because it doesn’t offer instantaneous results like IVF can, for the right person it may offer an increased chance of conceiving naturally or success with other fertility treatments.

Who is a candidate for tubal surgery?

Tubal surgery is usually recommended for women who have previously had their tubes ligated, or who have obstructions at the beginning of their tubes, directly where the tube connects to the uterus (proximal obstruction). We can identify whether you have tubal damage, and the type of damage it is, with a laparoscopy and other investigations.

For women with obstructions at the tail end of the tube (distal obstruction), it is unlikely that tubal surgery will be able to sufficiently repair the tube. Usually, distal obstruction is caused by an infection affecting the whole tube’s fine internal structure, and restoring patency cannot repair this structural damage. It is very hard for a sperm to find an egg in a tube that is damaged like this, and even if it does, the rate of ectopic pregnancy is high. There is also some evidence of lower IVF success rates for women with distal obstructions.

If you have distal tubal obstruction, Iris will normally recommend removing the tube, so that only your other tube is used.