Over 40 - ICSI or Vasovasectomy?

[MaisieM]

Good morning Ladies, I'm new to this forum (and all this!) so your advice would be much appreciated!

I am 41 (no children), my OH is 37. He had a vasectomy in 2001 after fathering two children. My AMH is 20 which is apparently quite good for my age and my periods, whilst on a long cycle are fairly regular). We had been considering a reversal then TTC naturally. However, I work at my local hospital and have been fortunate to have had a couple of informal consultations with the Consultant and Sister in the fertility suite. They have advised us not to bother with the reversal and to opt for ICSI instead (with optional storage of sperm from extraction).

Cost wise (which is a consideration for us) there appears to be only about £1000 between the two options but obviously the ICSI route will only give us one shot.

I asked the Sister, cards on the table, if there was really any point going for the reversal and just seeing what happened but she said that there wasn't much point because of my age. I feel very torn as I hadn't really wanted to persue the IVF route at all.

I'm absolutely useless at decisions like this and my OH is totally happy to go down either route (bless him).

Any words of wisdom would be welcome!

 

[sukisam]

it's a tough one the problem is depending on where people work they will advise you what they believe in! people that do reversals believe that is best and fertility specialists believe in IVF/ISCI.
I'm 39 my hubby and i opted for reversal which sadly hasn't worked yet. but I would say statistically your chances of conceiving would be higher with a reversal, we were given 90% cos it was under 5 years since reversal, what we didn't know is gthe first 6 months after the op is the best time to get preggers 9to do with scarring and antibodies), I was doing my Msc dissertation so we didn't ttc till about 6 months after.
We're seeing a fertility speacialist in about an hour but they informally told us a 30% chance of ISCI working at 39 reducing to 10% at 40 (this is their own figures),
do your homework if you have the reversal cos we just had a guy at bupa who only did ops once a week and didn't give a toss, wish i'd looked about there's a clinic in Hartlepool (think it's the Lister clinic) he's from the US and does reversals all day every day. They have a free advice line why not give them a ring. I think i'd go for reversal cos you can have sex every month rather than one go.
I'll let you know if the clinic say anything useful to us today that might help you (we've decided against ISCI cos I go mad on hormones + just don't think I'd cope!) but we're going to ask about IUI.
Good luck i hope you make the right decision for you both xx

 

[MaisieM]

Thank you so much for your reply. You've pretty much confirmed our own thoughts on this! I'm definitely going to heed your advice and gen up on the best surgeon around before we go ahead and book anything. I'm going to, yet again, do some informal 'digging' here at work to find out who is considered to be the best man (or woman) for the job! Please keep me posted with any news from your appointment and about the IUI route.

MM
x