DATE: September 17, 2019
CATEGORY: Tubal Reversal
I feel a need to clarify two words that often come up in tubal reversal surgery. We hear patients use these words incorrectly so often that I worry if some websites are using them incorrectly and that’s where patients are becoming confused.
Scar Tissue
The first term is “scar tissue”. It refers to an abnormal growth of tissue next to an area where the tissue has been damaged. The best way to provide one example is a cut on your skin that leaves a raised, reddened growth along the cut or incision. This happens often with a surgical incision. It usually, but not always, happens on the outside of the body. The tissue type that is usually involved is epithelial, or covering tissue. The fallopian tubes are not usually scarred but can have thermal damage from being burned with that type of tubal ligation.
Adhesions
The second term I want to clarify is “adhesions”. We see adhesion often when patients have had multiple C-sections. We have seen patients with five C-sections that looked like they never had been operated on, and we have seen patients with just one C-section that had a lot of adhesions. The internal organs normally live in a wet, airless environment. Opening the abdomen to operate exposes them to air in the room causing the potential for adhesions. Adhesions can also be caused by infections. If you put a dab of Super Glue on your thumb and touch your forefinger to it, the stringy things that form are a lot like filmy adhesions. Some adhesions are very thick and cannot be broken apart easily. In doing tubal reversals Dr. Turner and I can usually work around adhesions. We both use a very small incision and keep everything wet with a special solution so the air exposure is minimal