Urologists Sell ‘Vasectomy Madness’ With NCAA Hoopla

I saw this article in USA Today – and just had to share it. While dumb, and initially shocking, it does make sense in a man’s brain to do this this week. I guess it still qualifies under the general term of ‘March Madness!’

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Have you heard about “vasectomy madness?” It’s the uptick in vasectomies that some urologists say they see each year right round the time of the NCAA basketball tournament.

The idea: Men time the surgery so that they can combine recovery with a little quality TV sports time. Or, as one Virginia clinic puts it in promotional materials:“Spend three days on the couch watching hoops with your wife’s approval.”

News outlets across the country have been reporting similar promotions since at least 2008, when a clinic in Oregon first publicized its “Snip City” March Madness event. This year, that clinic is providing patients who come in during the tournament with a special recovery kit that includes a T-shirt, 3D glasses, a copy of Sports Illustrated and a cooler. A clinic in Cape Cod, Mass., is throwing in a pizza — or “or pie for the sterile guy,” as The Cape Cod Times says.

Why all the hoopla? It might have something to do with the fact that vasectomy — while a very safe and effective form of permanent birth control — is not particularly popular. Rates went up a bit during the height of the recession in 2009, but lag far behind sterilization surgery rates for women. Half of women ages 40 to 44 have had such surgeries; just 20% of their male partners have.

“We’ve had a long-term struggle to sell vasectomy,” one doctor told me for a story pegged to that 2009 blip. Doctors say men are less comfortable with medical procedures than women are — and are especially uncomfortable when a procedure involves their sexual organs. Meanwhile, certain myths about vasectomy persist: Doctors reassure guys that it won’t affect sexual performance or libido — it will just keep them from getting their partners pregnant.

Bryan Mehlhaff, a urologist at the Oregon Urology Institute — the “Snip City” clinic — tells an Oregon TV station: “I think there is this natural hesitancy some men have, but they shouldn’t. It’s not a big deal.”

Will a few pizzas and T-shirts — coupled with an everyone-is-doing-it marketing blitz — close the deal? The Oregon clinic sees a 10% rise in surgeries during March, Mehlhaff says. The Cleveland Clinic sees a 50% rise, a doctor there says.

Other doctors tell the Detroit Free Press they see no such scramble. But, one says: “Probably with the appropriate marketing, we can make it a trend.”

USA Today

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