MAT's experience - added February 10, 2007
Vasclip failure story
I appreciate your helping men by posting such an informative website. I would like to share my experience with having the vasectomy with the Vasclip device.
I decided to have the Vasclip procedure done in Jan 2005 after carefully studying about it for some time. I traveled out of state to Atlanta and had the procedure done by a highly respected Urologist at Emory University that was recommended by the Vasclip website. There was a lot of traveling time back and forth to do this but since this was a new procedure I wanted the best possible Doctor performing the procedure. The procedure went fine and I followed up with the same doctor at Emory for my follow up Semen screenings.
In June of 05 the doctor cleared me and told me I was sterile. I had no other problems or issues. Then Two years later my wife became pregnant. Upon retesting me the same doctor at Emory found that I was indeed passing sperm and the clips were still in place as he had placed them.
I contacted the Vasclip company and they informed me that they had about 30 such cases but they immediately informed me that they were all cases of doctor's error and not product failure or design flaw. As the clips are still in place in me I offered to have them removed so they could study how they failed, but they had absolutely no interest as they said it was of course doctors error that caused a recanalization over the clip.
I have researched on the internet and found a study that reports a much higher failure rate than advertised and I have also talked to another patient in my same situation. The guy I talked to in my situation and I both talked to different lawyers regarding the facts of our situations. Interestingly enough there really seems to be no recourse against the company, as they have a canned response blaming the doctors as the fault and not the device. In this situation you would have to prove that it was not malpractice and that it was a device design flaw. This would be extremely expensive to do and thereby is not feasible until there are enough people in our situations that it would be a significant issue.
Personally I think there is a issue of recanalization over the clip that is clearly much easier to happen in a Vasclip procedure than a traditional vasectomy. The company is saying that this recanalization can ONLY happen if the doctor accidently cuts the vas which would start the recanalization process. I don't buy this I think it is a process that just happens in some men for whatever reason as the doctor I was using was pretty impressive and very thorough.
I don't want anything from them, but I think it is clear that they are advertising results that they know are not true. The gentleman I talked to at the company personally told me he had 30 people in my situation and that is in the short time it has been out. The sad part is that many more people will have to be put through what my wife and I had to go through before anything can be done about it.
If anyone else has had such a situation like this please email me. As for potential customers good luck.
MAT