Any DH's with vericoceles?

wittyschaffy · January 2012

I posted a while back that DH and I were just starting down the path of figuring out why we're having trouble with getting pregnant. DH was told he had a vericocele at a physical way back in high school that he didn't give a second thought about afterward until he casually mentioned it to me at 11 months of trying to get pregnant (honestly, I don't know that he ever even bothered to figure out what it was because he was a high school kid and it didn't seem important at the time). Once he told me, I asked him to have it checked out again. His General Practitioner rated it 3 out of 10 for severity (1 being least severe) but recommended testing to be sure it wasn't causing issues. We just got the results back last week on his specimen sample and he had low numbers and low motility and have to find a good urologist for further testing.

I tend to research all things health related when issues arise and the info out there seems pretty much split about vericoceles causing or relating to male infertility as well as surgical repair being successful or not. I was curious if anyone else on the boards here have DH's with similar diagnoses? I guess I was hoping to hear about real world people dealing with them rather than just a bunch of scientific studies! It would be fantastic if this is our solution but I'm trying to be realistic that there may be other issues involved and try to not get too excited about this being the magic fix.

Thanks!

lynn0926 · January 2012

DH has vericocele and low morph as a result. We are doing IVF so we dont see a point in him doing the surgery. In the future if it affects his health like low T or something he will do it. My BIL had the surgery and there was no improvement in him at all. He said he was rather painless though and it was a quick recovery.

btaylor19 · January 2012

My DH has a varicocele on each side and his numbers have all been borderline. We met with a urologist and he said there is about a 50% chance that numbers will improve after surgery. We decided that it was not worth it for us and are moving on to IVF, but definitely meet with a urologist who works with IF. We met with few urologists who were pretty clueless to the IF side of it, so make sure you ask.

mandyandmike2009 · January 2012

My DH has that as well and has 0% motility and a VERY low sperm count. The urologist as well as my RE said that by doing the surgery you basically get a 50/50 chance that it will work. Even then with our numbers being so low he didnt seem to think it would help enough for us to do an IUI. If it causes him problems later on down the road then of course he would go for the surgery, but as of right now it seems pointless.

mandyandmike2009 · January 2012

btaylor19:
We decided that it was not worth it for us and are moving on to IVF, but definitely meet with a urologist who works with IF. We met with few urologists who were pretty clueless to the IF side of it, so make sure you ask.

THIS exactly

sbrowns08 · January 2012

Dh had 5 veins rated 2 out of 3. He had the surgery. I'm on my phone so I can't type now, but I'd be happy to answer ant specific questions. Just leave them here or page me in a different post and ill get back in later.

wittyschaffy · January 2012

Thanks for the tip about finding a urologist that deals with the IF side of things. I hadn't considered that they might approach things differently depending on their primary purpose but of course that makes total sense.

Our health insurance won't cover any surgical repair for it (they'd consider it fertility treatment) so we'll have to do some serious thinking after we meet with a urologist about our options and outcomes.

maggie2324 · January 2012

My DH has them too. Mild on one side, moderate on the other. The urologist said the surgery helps with about 40% of cases, but since our main problem is morphology, it's very unlikely to help us.

He said varicoceles are weakly linked to subfertility. About 40% of men with sperm issues have them, while 20% of men with normal fertility have them. They're very very common.

mandyandmike2009 · January 2012

wittyschaffy:

Thanks for the tip about finding a urologist that deals with the IF side of things. I hadn't considered that they might approach things differently depending on their primary purpose but of course that makes total sense.

Our health insurance won't cover any surgical repair for it (they'd consider it fertility treatment) so we'll have to do some serious thinking after we meet with a urologist about our options and outcomes.

Correct they wont' pay if it is for infertility, but MH uruologist said they would pay for it if it was causing him pain and then winked at us. The the urologist asked us if it caused him pain and of course we said YES incase he needed the surgery.

wittyschaffy · January 2012

Awesome!!! I'll have to remember that when we see the uro guy. I think I found one in network that specializes in IF issues. Just have to call and find out for sure.

phishgirl29 · January 2012

My DH has them too, but they were not a concern until recently. Good luck with everything and keep us posted!

Stillharbor · January 2012

DH went to a urologist and was told he "might" have one. He'd had erratic numbers and borderline low morphology on his SA's. One test had good high numbers and the next was low. RE said take folic acid for a month and redo the test.

Urologist wanted to do an u/s but told hubby that he couldn't be sure if that would give us any answers. Or even if he had a vericoceles. Since we are totally OOP, MH opted not to do do the u/s, since we may have spent the money and still not gotten any answers. Sorry.

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