Gentlemen: Are You Having Difficulty with Infertility or Experiencing Pain in Your Scrotum?

If you and your partner have been trying to conceive a baby and are having difficulty, you could be suffering from varicoceles. Varicoceles are enlarged varicose veins that occur in the scrotum. They are fairly common, affecting approximately 10% of men, usually in their 20’s and 30’s. Very often, varicoceles occur in the left testicle. Sometimes, varicoceles cause no symptoms and are harmless, but sometimes a varicocele causes pain, testicular atrophy (shrinkage), or fertility problems.

Varicoceles are a tangled network of blood vessels or swelling of the veins on the testicles. It is similar to varicose veins in the legs but in this condition a vein called the gonadal vein has weak, defective valves, resulting in the blood pooling in the varicose veins in the scrotum.

Varicoceles can cause fertility problems because they are thought to raise the temperature of the testicles or cause blood to back up in the veins supplying the testicles. Although the exact cause of why varicoceles affect fertility is poorly understood, varicoceles seem to help damage or kill off the sperm. Varicocele repair is typically recommended to improve the fertility of men who have both a varicocele and impaired sperm.

Treatment for varicoceles may be done surgically, but minimally invasive procedures should be considered before deciding what to do. Traditional surgery can mean painful, open surgery with general anesthesia and 2 to 3 weeks of down time, but that can be reduced significantly with alternative methods that reduce pain and swelling.

Our board certified interventional radiologists, Dr. William Julien and Dr. Curtis Anderson, recommend varicocele embolization, the least invasive treatment option for men. The procedure is fast and painless and you can usually return to normal activities right away. Varicocele embolization (VE) is a 30 minute, minimally invasive, outpatient procedure performed at our in-office operating suite. VE requires only a tiny cut in the skin, "twilight" sedation, and almost no downtime. Our endovascular physicians are experts when it comes to treating varicoceles without surgery.

View our video about Varicocles Embolization

The advantages of varicocele embolization include:

• It is performed under local anesthesia with mild sedation (general anesthesia is used for varicocele surgery).
• It is performed on an outpatient basis in our office endovascular suite, not in a hospital.
• There is no surgical incision in the groin, only a tiny hole in the skin where a catheter is placed.
• A patient with varicoceles on both sides can have both fixed at the same time through one vein puncture site (surgery requires two separate open incisions).
• It is as effective as surgery, as measured by improvement in pain, semen analysis, and pregnancy rates.
• There is a lower rate of complications compared to surgery; infection has not been reported after embolization.

To find out more about minimally invasive varicocele treatment, we invite you to contact South Florida Vascular Associates to schedule a consultation at one of our 3 convenient locations in Coconut Creek, Boynton Beach, or Plantation, Florida. Call us today: (954) 725-4141.