Tubal reversal surgery as an alternative for women seeking to untie their tubes may be a dying science. That is unless we get more doctors like Dr. Monteith. He could not get the training he needed to do tubal reversal surgeries, so he sought out his own mentor.

Let's leave Dr. Monteith and his search for tubal reversal training aside for a moment and look a little more into the question of whether or not these skills are really being lost. Will there come a day when a woman cannot get a tubal reversal? We'll use Dr. Monteith himself, however, as the source of our answer.

Dr. Monteith makes posts on the http://www.tubal-reversal.net/ blog. In a couple of these, he discussed the training available. Once he determined he wished to become a tubal reversal doctor, he looked into what kind of training he could get. Already an ob/gyn who worked on high risks cases, the normal course of action would be pursuing a fellowship in reproductive endocrinology. But the experience of friends showed this just wouldn't train him as he wished. One friend who did the whole three year fellowship did only three tubal reversals in three years. Another friend did zero.

Furthermore, in another blog post, Dr. Monteith relates his own obstetrics and gynecology experience as a resident from 1997 to 2001. While he learned much during that time, he never saw even one tubal reversal procedure. Fact is, he would not have even known it was a good alternative for many women but for one incident. During a patient appointment which he observed as a resident, the doctor suggested the patient seek out a tubal reversal from Dr. Berger rather than the usual IVF.

Recovering from his surprise, Dr. Monteith asked questions of the doctor after the patient's counseling to learn more. He had been informed somewhere that the success rate of tubal reversal was less than 50% and when asking the doctor about that, he got a very indignant reply that it was 80% in the best hands. Look into tubal reversal success rates to learn more for yourself but know that it can be even higher than 80% depending upon the factors.

This one appointment plus a later meeting with a member of the CHTC staff led Dr. Monteith to pursue mentoring from Dr. Berger. He wished to learn the skills of the dying science of tubal reversal surgery where he could find some personal fulfillment in providing help to women and their families in order to have children.

Hopefully, more young doctors will seek such training and education from mentors before tubal reversals are a dying science. We need more young men and women like who will take this matter into their own hands and help keep tubal reversal surgery an alternative for all women.