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You mention dye testing of the fallopian tubes. Why is that important?
As soon as you are asleep we put a tiny tube in your uterus so that we can force dye through your tubes to make sure that they are open at the end of your surgery. This is done before your tummy is closed and you wake up. If the dye does not come out of the end of the tube we know that we need to take them apart and redo them.
Some people say they don’t need to do this step. It’s expensive and time-consuming. I have done a lot of tubal reversals and from time to time I find a tube that I thought was perfect needs to be taken back apart and done over.
Sometimes we find a tube that is a little open but not open enough. The dye comes out but not fast enough. These need to be redone.
The dye is very expensive and it’s tricky to get it to work correctly so you don’t have errors but it’s helpful in other ways. For years, I did tubal ligation reversals in one layer because that was the way I was taught. When we started to do reversals in two layers, from the inside out, we noticed the dye flowed a lot better than before. To me, this meant the tube was more open. No one knows for sure if dye testing helps but it certainly is reassuring to me and to our patients. It is especially gratifying to me when someone who has been told their tubes could never be fixed (like an Essure patient) has dye come pouring out.
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You mention dye testing of the fallopian tubes. Why is that important?
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