Varicocele

[crawfonr]

Hi,

I am due to go into surgery in 1 month for a Varicosele on left side. Ive had this for probably 10 years but finally decided to do something about it after some purpe dots appeared on my testicle due to the veins breaking. I am a very sporty 30 year old man so i want to be careful about surgery and the long term effects.

Ive read about 3 types of surgery on this site - Surgical ligation, Embolization and Laparoscopy. I am based in UK so national health service will do surgical as standard but since reading this site i think i should research other options. I would like to continue lifting weights, surfing, cycling etc and am worried i will cause more problems by having surgery than by just leaving those worms alone!

Could anyone provide any advice please?

Thanks

[bazuk]

hi there... this is coming from experience so i hope this helps.

I am a very active swimmer and water polo player and attend the gym a lot. what i would say is that you would have to take it easy for a few weeks, especially with weights. there will be no long term effects but what i will say is that i had the ligation in order to alleviate the pain i was having. aestically the ''bag of worms doesnt entirely dissapear, however you should notice shrinkage.

Im not too sure what is given on the NHS but i had microsurgical varicocele repair as well as embolization. I wasnt comfortable with the fact of having a foreign body sitting in my veins and i tended to have more faith in surgery, and thus thought this was actually the better option.

if u want to know any of the specifics i would be glad to assist.

[crawfonr]

Thanks for the reply.. thats quite reassuring that you have no long term side effects. Just a couple of questions - not too sure what micro-surgical means. Is that different from normal surgical procedure? Is it normal to have embolisation aswell? Where did you have this done - im guessing youre not in the UK?

thanks!

[bazuk]

Hi there. no problem. There is a difference in that apparantly they use a microscope making the success rate higher, nonetheless this may be standard procedure in all surgery- i would ask your surgeon if this is how it is performed... also type in google the different options as it explains it slightly better than i would.

I had my surgery at the London Clinic, harley street.

My story is in fact a bit complicated in that in november 2004 i underwent microsurgical repair. The operation was a success in that the pain that i was experiencing was alleviated for some time, however, a few months later, i was experiengin the pain again and an ultrasound confirmed that i still had the varicocele. . this was because the gubernacular veins (veins that lie underneath the testicle) werent initially ligated as this procedure requires opertating on the testicle itself and, therefore, surgeons do not tend to do this when they perform a normal operation.

I would like to say that this occurs in like only 2% of patients and thgerefore one has to be very unlucky for this to occur. I then tried having embolization, which found that the veins which the surgeon had ligated initially were cut off and thus this was when i was advised to have the second surgery.

It is therefore not normal to have embolization as well- i merely had it after my first operation in case the surgeon had missed any veins that should have been ligated in the original surgery. I was just very very unlucky..

dont be shy to ask anything related to the surgery itself..