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How is varicocele treated?

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How is varicocele treated?

Philip Werthman, FACS (Director, Center for Male Reproductive Medicine) gives expert video advice on: What causes infertility in men? and more...

Vericocele is usually treated with surgery. It's a very tiny surgery, outpatient, where a doctor can go in microsurgically and block the veins, stop the abnormal flow of blood back down to the testicle. There are also a variety of other treatments. This can be done laparoscopically. It can also be done radiologically, through a procedure called embolization, where a doctor would go in with a little catheter through one of the big veins in the leg, and snake this catheter into the vein of the testicle and then block the vein from the inside. As opposed to doing it surgically, where you block it from the outside by putting a tie around it, here you put little balloons or coils in that cause the vein to clot off and stop the abnormal blood flow. What's been clear over the last few years is the best way to do this is microsurgically, because it offers the best results, the best chances of success, with the least amount of complications.

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