Husband has sperm 8 months after vasectomy. Did the procedure fail?

Yes. The American Urological Association says that, if there are sperm 6 months after a vasectomy, the procedure should be considered unsuccessful and a repeat procedure should be performed.

Published on Jul 11, 2012

There two scenarios here. It is possible that the vasectomy has successfully divided the vas and that the sperm are, for whatever reason, slow to completely clear. If this is the thinking you would re check after another twenty or so ejaculations. On the other hand this may represent a recanalization of the vas tubes, a small channel, that has reconnected the vas tubes. In this case another vasectomy would be performed. A couple of things: You could have a formal semen analysis performed to actually get a count, it is possible that 20 per highpower field correlates with a very low total count. Some feel that after a vasectomy less than 100,000 on a semen analysis is acceptable. I have experienced you particular situation about five times in my career and I have repeated the vasectomy. Interestingly each time it corrected the small numbers of sperm that persistently showed up on microscopic exam.

Published on Jul 11, 2012