Studies Suggest Tiny Coil Might Work As First Nonsurgical Method.(Essure from Conceptus Inc.)

2001 DEC 27 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Gabriella Avina had bad luck with birth control. Even her husband's vasectomy failed. Wary of the surgery required for sterilization, she tested a dramatically different approach: an experimental device that permanently blocks her fallopian tubes - and is inserted without a cut.

"I kept saying, 'You're sure? You're sure?'" Avina recalled, as doctors took x-rays and performed other tests to ensure the Martinez, California, nurse - happy with three children - wouldn't get pregnant again. "It was so easy."

Sterilization is the most widely used form of contraception. More than 180 million women worldwide have had it performed. In tubal ligation, doctors cut and tie the fallopian tubes, or cauterize or clip them shut, to keep eggs released by the ovaries from reaching the uterus. It requires either conventional surgery, usually right after the woman delivers a baby, or laparoscopic surgery, where doctors work through small incisions in the abdomen. Tubal ligation is very safe but does carry some risks. Plus, it takes time to recover.

So gynecologists have sought a non-surgical option. Repeated attempts have failed since the 1970s, as plugs or inserted medications have proven either ineffective or dangerous.

Enter Essure. It looks like a tiny spring. Flexible coils temporarily anchor it inside the fallopian tube. Dacron-like mesh embedded in those coils - material widely used in medical procedures - irritates the tube's lining and, over three months, causes scar tissue to grow. That scar tissue permanently plugs the tube.

Essure is inserted in a half-hour procedure called hysteroscopic sterilization, which requires only local anesthesia. Doctors thread the hysteroscope, a thin tube, which contains a camera and a coil-holding catheter, into the uterus and then into each fallopian tube. A twist of the catheter leaves Essure in place.

It's not perfect. First, ...