Has anyone had a laparoscopy to help with fertility?

[Anonymous]

My doctor suggested looking into this to me after a year of ttc. (I'm now almost 37). I have had awful cramps all of my like and have a family history of endometriosis. My specialist sent me to my general ob for a consult, and she proceeded to tell me that the only way endometriosis affects fertility is if your tubes are actually blocked and therefore didn't think the procedure would be beneficial. This is contrary to everything I have read, and I am now wanting a second opinion.

Has anyone had this done and if so, what were the reasons? Did it help? Are there any doctors that anyone would recommend for the procedure?

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Laparoscopy will not help with infertility - it is a diagnostic tool as far as I know. I had it for suspected PCO (Polycystic Ovaries) and once in (I saw the video myself after recovery!) you could indeed see that I had tiny eggs formed like a string of pearls around my ovaries. Also-- it allowed the doc to get a better sense of the shape uterus (I had a combined laparoscopy/hysteroscopy) b/c they suspected a T-shape.

If you are concerned with blocked tubes, or looking for endometriosis -- an HSG is a procedure often done - I've had it twice -- some women find there is a blockage and it's "blown out" by the HSG (hysteosalpingogram -- sp?).

Go see a fertility specialist -- there have been many rec'd on this board. I was very happy with Dr. Soheil Muasher in Fairfax.

Good luck!!!

[Anonymous]

I had laparascopy. My ovaries were totally covered in cysts and I also had endometriosis (stage IV). Basically they went in an removed a whole bunch of gunk. My ovaries were so encassed in cysts that they thought that the surgery was necessary even though the prognosis for getting spontaneously pregnant afterwards was not that great, but it would better my odds with IUI or IVF. The good news with the surgery is that my periods were much less painful afterwards. We only tried on our own for a couple of months before our doc and another one we went to for a second opinion recommended going straight to IVF. In our case we were successful with that.

HSG -- is a diagnostic tool to see if your tubes are clear. In my case, an HSG was one of the first diagnostic procedures they ran through, and my tubes were clear. In some women, endometriosis can block the tubes, but you can still have endometriosis even if your tubes are clear. In some cases, the HSG procedure itself will clear the tubes, but in other cases, it only detects the fact that the tubes are blocked. They did do a second HSG as part of my laparascopy just to confirm that things were still clear.

FYI -- my laparascopic surgery was done by Dr. Gordon at Dominion Fertility and we did our IVF through Shady Grove. Both groups were in agreement as to the course of treatment.

[Anonymous]

After HSG showed a blocked tube, a laparoscopy was done to see if they could unblock the tube. It turned out the tube was not blocked after all do was able to proceed with infertility treatments.