Hundreds of thousands of women decide each year to have surgery such as tubal ligation to keep them from having more children. Most of these are quite happy with their decision. But there is a minority, about 6%, who will decide due to changes in circumstances that they do indeed want a child. For most of this group, having the chances of having their own child again can be increased by having another surgery done. This surgery is called a tubal ligation reversal.

Although having a child is the reason most women seek out a tubal ligation reversal, some seek it as a means to provide relief to the side effects of their original surgery to "tie their tubes". A woman who suffers through these side effects, called the post tubal ligation syndrome, may being go through any number of health problems.

For some women, they find that they start to suffer from the symptoms associated with the menopause much earlier than expected. Also for quite a few, they find that their libido and sex drive is almost non existent and they find that the symptoms associated with premenstrual syndrome become what worse. There are even cases where the woman will suffer from hot or cold flashes along with trouble sleeping and their moods can be somewhat erratic.

Although a tubal ligation reversal may be one answer to any of the above it is not the only answer and several points need to be considered to determine just what is best. Once you have picked a potential surgeon, he is going to need to know your past surgical history such as what form of tubal ligation you actually had.

A couple other factors which will need to be discussed have to do with your age. Any woman over the age of 40 should know that even without having ever undergone the initial surgery, that her chances of getting pregnant would be less. Time is just acting against you. Also the surgeon will need to determine what type of damage, if any, was done in the original surgery or has occurred over the years.

The women with the best chances of a successful tubal ligation reversal will be those who only had a very small section of their tubes removed originally. Additionally those whose surgeon use the clips or rings to prevent the egg from traveling down the tubes also have a better chance.

As you can understand from the above factors, your potential surgeon will most definitely need to have access to and review the surgical and post op notes from your original surgery. He should then schedule an appointment or use some other arrangement (if not to be a local procedure) to discuss your situation with you and the alternative of IVF if that applies.

He should have an initial consultation with you after reviewing the notes and together you will weigh all the pertinent factors such as those discussed above. Hopefully you will find out that having a tubal ligation reversal surgery will help alleviate your problems, if that is why you wanted the surgery, or will bring a bouncing bundle of joy into your life.