*An easy in-office procedure

You have reached the point in your life that you are confident your family is complete.  You and your husband have 4 beautiful children; the youngest is now 5 years old.  Next year she will begin school and you wish to resume your career.  Since her birth you have used a birth control pill for contraception.  This worked nicely in preventing pregnancy but the pill however is not something that you feel comfortable continuing into your forties.  A permanent form of contraception is appealing but you really don’t want surgery.  So what choices do you have?

Essure is a permanent sterilization procedure performed in the office and can be completed within 10 minutes. No hormones, cutting, burning, or anesthesia is required.  A small scope is passed through the vagina and cervix into the uterus (honest this doesn’t hurt!) enabling the tubal openings to be visualized. 

Small, flexible micro-inserts or plugs are placed into the tubes. It takes about 3 months for these plugs to heal into place. At that time a simple x-ray test is performed to make sure the tubes are completely occluded.  It is recommended that the pill or some other form of contraception be used until this x-ray is completed.  This procedure has been FDA-approved since 2002.  It is 99.8% effective and is the only birth control method with zero pregnancies.

Read more about this procedure which was recently highlighted in The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Health and Fitness section.

 http://www.cleveland.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2011/09/nonsurgical_option_for_sterili.html