A profile of 125 women requesting reversal of sterilization

A series of 125 consecutive requests from patients in a private practice for reversal of sterilization has been analysed. Most of the women (65,6%) had changed their marital status since the sterilization, 93,9% of these having been divorced (most of whom remarried--73,1% of the new husbands being younger than their wives and 89,6% marrying for the first time) and 6,1% widowed. In the 34,4% in whom there had been no change in marital status, a reappraisal and the wish to have another baby, sometimes consequent upon the death of a child (16,3%) or an improvement in health (7,0%) led to the request for reversal of sterilization. At the time of sterilization 64,8% of the women had been under the age of 30 years, and 82 (65,6%) had not had a stable marriage. This indicates that very careful counselling should be carried out before sterilizing patients, and also before considering reversal of the operation.