Dr. Vij on trends in vasectomy volume after overturning of Roe v Wade

In this video, Sarah Vij, MD, discusses the background behind the recent International Journal of Impotence Research paper, “Rising vasectomy volume following reversal of federal protections for abortion rights in the United States,” for which she served as senior author. Vij is a urologist at Glickman Urological & Kidney Institute at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio.

Transcription:

We noticed anecdotally, and we were hearing from colleagues across the country, that after Roe v Wade was overturned, interest in vasectomy seemed to be going up. We were getting more consults in clinic, we saw people booking out further for our procedures and other peers were saying the same thing. We're very interested in this, and there's a lot of talk about Roe v. Wade affecting the reproductive health of women. This implies that it's also affecting reproductive health decisions for men, which is an interesting spin [that is] important for politicians to understand and for us to understand as providers. We knew that there'd be a little bit of lag time because you've got to get an appointment scheduled for a consultation, then you need to get the procedure scheduled, and we don't always have availability immediately. So we needed to at least wait until a little bit of time passed. What we really wanted to capture was the degree of interest in the procedure, which would be represented by scheduling the consultation, and then conversion to actually having it, as we thought maybe some of these guys are just entertaining the idea, then they think about it more, learn about what's entailed, learn about the permanence, and decide to hold off. And so we looked at follow through. Secondarily, we wanted to see, is this a younger patient population? Are we thinking maybe there are more guys that don't have kids, or people that have fewer kids—maybe you have a family that has 3 [children] and was thinking 4, and now they're worried about possible pregnancy outcomes and not having options. We looked at all of those things and that was really the overall premise.

This transcription was edited for clarity.